attack
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "attack", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "attack" 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 "attack" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
attack is aEnglishnoun. It means: An attempt to cause damage, injury to, or death of an opponent or enemy. Pronounced /əˈtæk/. It ranks #842 in English word frequency. Often confused with attic and attain.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | attack |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /əˈtæk/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #842 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 11 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for attack is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈtæk/. Corpus data places it at rank #842 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for attack, with forms such as "atack", "atatck", and "attacck". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 11 confusable-pair relationships, "attic", "attain", "Attica", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Italian a- Proto-Indo-European *dews-? Proto-Indo-European *dus- Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwi- Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwís … 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 attack, spelled A-T-T-A-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An attempt to cause damage, injury to, or death of an opponent or enemy.
- 2An attempt to cause damage, injury to, or death of an opponent or enemy.
- 3An attempt to detract from the worth or credibility of, a person, position, idea, object, or thing, by physical, verbal, emotional, or other assault.
- 4A time in which one attacks; the offence of a battle.
- 5The beginning of active operations on anything.
- 6An attempt to exploit a vulnerability in a computer system.
- 7Collectively, the bowlers of a cricket side.
- 8Any contact with the ball other than a serve or block which sends the ball across the plane of the net.
- 9The three attackmen on the field or all the attackmen of a team.
- 10The sudden onset of a disease or condition.
- 11An active episode of a chronic or recurrent disease.
- 12The onset of a musical note, particularly with respect to the strength (and duration) of that onset.
- 13The amount of time taken for the volume of an audio signal to go from zero to maximum level (e.g. an audio waveform representing a snare drum hit would feature a very fast attack, whereas that of a wave washing to shore would feature a slow attack).
- 14The initial sensory impact of a wine.
- 15Short for heart attack.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Italian a- Proto-Indo-European *dews-? Proto-Indo-European *dus- Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwi- Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwís Latin dis- Old French des- Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- Proto-Germanic *stikaną Proto-West Germanic *stekander. Old French atachier Old French destachier Middle French destacherbor. Italian distaccare Italian staccare Italian attaccarebor. French attaquer French attaquebor. English attack Borrowed from French attaque, derived from the verb attaquer, from Italian attaccare (“to join, attach”) (used in attaccare battaglia (“to join battle”)), from Frankish *stakkijan (“to stick, stick to, attach”). Doublet of attach. Displaced native Middle English onresen, from Old English onrǣsan (“to attack”); and Middle English resinge (“an assault, attack”) (compare Old English onrǣs (“an attack”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: atack,atatck,attacck,attackk,attakc,attcak,tatack
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for attack
Misspelling Variants of "attack"
Frequency rank: #842 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: