birth
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "birth", 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 "birth" 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 "birth" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
birth is aEnglishnoun. It means: The process of childbearing; the beginning of life; the emergence of a human baby or other viviparous animal offspring from the mother's body into the environment. Pronounced /bɜːθ/. It ranks #1,745 in English word frequency. Often confused with bit and both.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | birth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɜːθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,745 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for birth is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɜːθ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,745 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 Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for birth, with forms such as "bbirth", "birht", and "birrth". 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, "bit", "both", "bite", 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 *bʰer- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *bʰértisder. Proto-Germanic *burþiz Old Norse burðrbor. Middle English birthe English birth From Middle English birthe (1250), from earlier burthe, burde, from Old Norse… 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 birth, spelled B-I-R-T-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The process of childbearing; the beginning of life; the emergence of a human baby or other viviparous animal offspring from the mother's body into the environment.
- 2An instance of childbirth.
- 3A beginning or start; a point of origin.
- 4The circumstances of one's background, ancestry, or upbringing.
- 5That which is born.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *bʰértisder. Proto-Germanic *burþiz Old Norse burðrbor. Middle English birthe English birth From Middle English birthe (1250), from earlier burthe, burde, from Old Norse burðr, byrd (Old Swedish byrth, Swedish börd), replacing Old English ġebyrd (rare variant byrþ), equivalent to bear + -th (thus a piecewise doublet of berth). The Old Norse is from Proto-Germanic *burdiz (compare Old Frisian berde, berd); Old English ġebyrd is from prefixed *gaburþiz (compare Dutch geboorte, German Geburt), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰŕ̥tis (compare Latin fors (“luck”), Old Irish brith), from *bʰer- (“to carry, bear”). More at bear.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbirth,birht,birrth,birthh,birtth,bitrh,brith,ibrth
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for birth
Misspelling Variants of "birth"
Frequency rank: #1,745 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "birth"?
What does "birth" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "birth"?
How do you pronounce "birth"?
What is the origin of the word "birth"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: