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boob-tube

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 "boob-tube", 9-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 "boob-tube" 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 "boob-tube" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

boob tube is aEnglishnoun. It means: A television.

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Key facts for boob tube
PropertyValue
Headwordboob tube
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

boob tube is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for boob tube is 9 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for boob tube in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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: * (television): An allusion to the idiocy of television programming and the supposed audience for such (boobs) and that the televisions of that era used cathode ray tube (CRT) vacuum tube displays. First use appears c. 1959, in the The Herald Journal. * (cl… 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 boob tube, spelled B-O-O-B- -T-U-B-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    A television.
  2. 2
    A type of woman's upper body garment consisting of a taut band of cloth around the breasts and back.

Etymology

* (television): An allusion to the idiocy of television programming and the supposed audience for such (boobs) and that the televisions of that era used cathode ray tube (CRT) vacuum tube displays. First use appears c. 1959, in the The Herald Journal. * (clothing): Due to the clothing being a tube-like garment that covers the breasts (boobs) of a woman. First use appears c. 1977, in the Daily Mail.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "boob tube"?
"boob tube" is spelled B-O-O-B- -T-U-B-E.
What does "boob tube" mean?
As a noun, "boob tube" means: A television.
What is the origin of the word "boob tube"?
* (television): An allusion to the idiocy of television programming and the supposed audience for such (boobs) and that the televisions of that era used cathode ray tube (CRT) vacuum tube displays. First use appears c. 1959, in the The Herald Jour... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby English words

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

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.