beach
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "beach", 5-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 "beach" 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 "beach" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
beach is aEnglishnoun. It means: The shore of a body of water, especially when sandy or pebbly. Pronounced /biːt͡ʃ/. It ranks #1,263 in English word frequency. Often confused with beat and bear.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | beach |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /biːt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,263 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for beach is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /biːt͡ʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,263 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 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 beach, with forms such as "baech", "bbeach", and "beacch". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "beat", "bear", "beam", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English bache, bæcche (“bank, sandbank”), from Old English beċe (“beck, brook, stream”), from Proto-West Germanic *baki, from Proto-Germanic *bakiz (“brook”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“flowing water”). Cognates Cognate with Cimbrian pach… 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 beach, spelled B-E-A-C-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The shore of a body of water, especially when sandy or pebbly.
- 2A horizontal strip of land, usually sandy, adjoining water.
- 3The loose pebbles of the seashore, especially worn by waves; shingle.
- 4Synonym of gravel trap.
- 5A dry, dusty pitch or situation, as though playing on sand.
- 6Euphemistic form of bitch (taboo swear word).
Etymology
From Middle English bache, bæcche (“bank, sandbank”), from Old English beċe (“beck, brook, stream”), from Proto-West Germanic *baki, from Proto-Germanic *bakiz (“brook”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“flowing water”). Cognates Cognate with Cimbrian pach (“brook, creek, stream”), Dutch beek (“brook, stream”), German Bach (“brook, stream”), German Low German Beek (“brook, stream”), Luxembourgish Baach (“brook, stream”), Mòcheno pòch (“brook, creek, stream”), Vilamovian bāh, baoch (“brook, stream”), Danish bæk (“brook”), Icelandic bekkur (“creek, spring, stream”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk bekk (“brook, creek, stream”), Swedish bäck (“brook, creek, stream”); also Lithuanian banga (“billow, wave”). More at batch, beck.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: baech,bbeach,beacch,beachh,beahc,becah,ebach
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for beach
Misspelling Variants of "beach"
Frequency rank: #1,263 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: