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artillery

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

9 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "artillery", 9-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "artillery" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "artillery" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

artillery is aEnglishnoun. It means: Large projectile weapons, in modern usage usually large guns, but also rocket artillery. Pronounced /ɑːˈtɪləɹi/. It ranks #7,524 in English word frequency.

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Key facts for artillery
PropertyValue
Headwordartillery
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/ɑːˈtɪləɹi/
Letters9
Frequency rank#7,524
Misspellings tracked12
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of artillery in English word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for artillery is 9 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɑːˈtɪləɹi/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,524 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our generated misspelling index lists 12 likely wrong-spelling variants for artillery, with forms such as "aritllery", "arrtillery", and "artilelry". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English artillerie, from Old French artillerie (“collection of military engines, crossbows, lances etc.”), from artillier (“to equip, provide with contraptions”), alteration of atiller (“to arrange, adjust, put on clothes or, especially, pieces … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is artillery, spelled A-R-T-I-L-L-E-R-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Large projectile weapons, in modern usage usually large guns, but also rocket artillery.
  2. 2
    An army unit that uses such weapons, or a military formation using projectile weapons, such as archers.
  3. 3
    Gunnery (design and manufacture of guns).
  4. 4
    Weapons, especially siege engines.
  5. 5
    One or more guns.

Etymology

From Middle English artillerie, from Old French artillerie (“collection of military engines, crossbows, lances etc.”), from artillier (“to equip, provide with contraptions”), alteration of atiller (“to arrange, adjust, put on clothes or, especially, pieces of armour”) (influenced by art), itself from Vulgar Latin *apticlō < **apticulō, from Latin aptō (“to make capable”).

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: aritllery,arrtillery,artilelry,artilery,artillerry,artilleryy,artilleyr,artillrey,artlilery,arttillery,atrillery,ratillery

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for artillery

Misspelling Variants of "artillery"

aritllery9arrtillery10artilelry9artilery8artillerry10artilleryy10artilleyr9artillrey9
Misspelling Variants of "artillery"

Frequency rank: #7,524 in English

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "artillery"?
"artillery" is spelled A-R-T-I-L-L-E-R-Y. The IPA pronunciation is /ɑːˈtɪləɹi/.
What does "artillery" mean?
As a noun, "artillery" means: Large projectile weapons, in modern usage usually large guns, but also rocket artillery.
What are common misspellings of "artillery"?
Common misspellings include "aritllery", "arrtillery", "artilelry", "artilery", "artillerry". The correct spelling is "artillery".
How do you pronounce "artillery"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "artillery" is /ɑːˈtɪləɹi/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "artillery"?
From Middle English artillerie, from Old French artillerie (“collection of military engines, crossbows, lances etc.”), from artillier (“to equip, provide with contraptions”), alteration of atiller (“to arrange, adjust, put on clothes or, especiall... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.