book
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "book", 4-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 "book" 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 "book" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
book is aEnglishnoun. It means: A collection of sheets of paper bound together to hinge at one edge, containing printed or written material, pictures, etc. Pronounced /bʊk/. It ranks #353 in English word frequency. Often confused with boy and box.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | book |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bʊk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #353 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for book is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bʊk/. Corpus data places it at rank #353 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 21 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 3 documented wrong-spelling variants for book, with forms such as "bbook", "bookk", and "obok". 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, "boy", "box", "bro", 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 *bʰeh₂ǵosder.? Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂g-der.? Proto-Germanic *bōks Proto-West Germanic *bōk Old English bōc Middle English bok English book From Middle English bok, book, from Old English bōc, from Proto-West Germanic *… 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 book, spelled B-O-O-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A collection of sheets of paper bound together to hinge at one edge, containing printed or written material, pictures, etc.
- 2A long work fit for publication, typically prose, such as a novel or textbook, and typically published as such a bound collection of sheets, but now sometimes electronically as an e-book.
- 3A major division of a long work.
- 4A record of betting (from the use of a notebook to record what each person has bet).
- 5A bookmaker (a person who takes bets on sporting events and similar); bookie; turf accountant.
- 6A convenient collection, in a form resembling a book, of small paper items for individual use.
- 7The script of a musical or opera.
- 8Records of the accounts of a business.
- 9A book award, a recognition for receiving the highest grade in a class (traditionally an actual book, but recently more likely a letter or certificate acknowledging the achievement).
- 10Six tricks taken by one side.
- 11Four of a kind.
- 12A document, held by the referee, of the incidents that happened in a game.
- 13A list of all players who have been booked (received a warning) in a game.
- 14The list of mares that a stallion will breed in a given season.
- 15A list of the races that a jockey is scheduled to ride in.
- 16The twenty-sixth Lenormand card.
- 17Any source of instruction.
- 18The accumulated body of knowledge passed down among black pimps.
- 19A portfolio of one's previous work in the industry.
- 20The sum of chess knowledge in the opening or endgame.
- 21A package of silk.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂ǵosder.? Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂g-der.? Proto-Germanic *bōks Proto-West Germanic *bōk Old English bōc Middle English bok English book From Middle English bok, book, from Old English bōc, from Proto-West Germanic *bōk, from Proto-Germanic *bōks. Bookmaker sense by clipping. Cognates Cognate with Scots beuk, buik, buke (“book”), Yola buke (“book”), North Frisian Bok, buk, bök (“book”), Saterland Frisian Bouk (“book”), West Frisian, Dutch boek (“book”), Alemannic German Buech (“book”), Bavarian Buach (“book”), Central Franconian Booch, Buch (“book”), German, Luxembourgish Buch (“book”), German Low German Book (“book”), Limburgish book, Bouk (“book”), Vilamovian büch (“book”), Yiddish בוך (bukh, “book”), Danish bog (“book”), Elfdalian buok (“book”), Faroese, Icelandic bók (“book”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish bok (“book”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbook,bookk,obok
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for book
Misspelling Variants of "book"
Frequency rank: #353 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: