believe
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "believe", 7-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 "believe" 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 "believe" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
believe is aEnglishverb. It means: To accept as true, particularly without absolute certainty (i.e., as opposed to knowing). Pronounced /bɪˈliːv/. It ranks #286 in English word frequency. Often confused with Belize and belive.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | believe |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /bɪˈliːv/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #286 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for believe is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɪˈliːv/. Corpus data places it at rank #286 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for believe, with forms such as "bbelieve", "beileve", and "beleive". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "Belize", "belive", "believed", 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 *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epider. Proto-Indo-European *h₁pi Proto-Germanic *bider. Proto-Germanic *bi- Proto-West Germanic *bi- Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *laubō P… 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 believe, spelled B-E-L-I-E-V-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To accept as true, particularly without absolute certainty (i.e., as opposed to knowing).
- 2To accept that someone is telling the truth.
- 3To have religious faith; to believe in a greater truth.
- 4To opine, think, reckon.
- 5[with in]
- 6[with in]
- 7[with in]
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epider. Proto-Indo-European *h₁pi Proto-Germanic *bider. Proto-Germanic *bi- Proto-West Germanic *bi- Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *laubō Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Germanic *-janą Proto-Germanic *laubijaną Proto-West Germanic *laubijan Proto-West Germanic *bilaubijan Old English belīefan Middle English bileven English believe From Middle English beleven, bileven, from Old English belīefan (“to believe”), from Proto-West Germanic *bilaubijan (“to believe”), equivalent to be- + leave (“to give leave or permission to, permit, allow, grant”). Cognate with Scots beleve (“to believe”), Middle Low German belö̂ven (“to believe”), Middle High German belouben (“to believe”). A related term in Old English was ġelīefan (“to be dear to; believe, trust”), from Proto-West Germanic *galaubijan (“to have faith, believe”), from Proto-Germanic *galaubijaną. Compare also Old English ġelēafa (“belief, faith, confidence, trust”), Old English lēof ("dear, valued, beloved, pleasant, agreeable" > English lief). Related also to North Frisian leauwjen (“to believe”), West Frisian leauwe (“to believe”), Dutch geloven (“to believe”), German glauben (“to believe”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌻𐌰𐌿𐌱𐌾𐌰𐌽 (galaubjan, “to hold dear, valuable, or satisfactory, approve of, believe”). The prepositionally transitive senses with in are a semantic loan from Latin crēdō in aliquem / aliquid.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbelieve,beileve,beleive,belieev,believve,belivee,bellieve,bleieve,eblieve
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for believe
Misspelling Variants of "believe"
Frequency rank: #286 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: