bow
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bow", 3-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 "bow" 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 "bow" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bow is aEnglishnoun. It means: A weapon made of a curved piece of wood or other flexible material whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows. Pronounced /bəʊ/. It ranks #4,287 in English word frequency. Often confused with by and BS.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bəʊ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,287 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bow is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bəʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,287 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for bow in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BS", "br", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English bowe, from Old English boga, Proto-West Germanic *bogō, from Proto-Germanic *bugô. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Booge (“arch, bow, curve”), West Frisian bôge (“arc, arch, bow”), Dutch boog (“arc, arch, bow”), German Bogen (“ar… 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 bow, spelled B-O-W, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A weapon made of a curved piece of wood or other flexible material whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows.
- 2A curved bend in a rod or planar surface, or in a linear formation such as a river (see oxbow).
- 3A rod with horsehair (or an artificial substitute) stretched between the ends, used for playing various stringed musical instruments.
- 4A stringed instrument (chordophone), consisting of a stick with a single taut cord stretched between the ends, most often played by plucking.
- 5A type of knot with two loops, used to tie together two cords such as shoelaces or apron strings, and frequently used as decoration, such as in gift-wrapping.
- 6Anything bent or curved, such as a rainbow.
- 7The U-shaped piece which goes around the neck of an ox and fastens it to the yoke.
- 8Either of the arms of a pair of spectacles, running from the side of the lens to behind the wearer's ear.
- 9Any instrument consisting of an elastic rod, with ends connected by a string, employed for giving reciprocating motion to a drill, or for preparing and arranging hair, fur, etc., used by hatters.
- 10A crude sort of quadrant formerly used for taking the sun's altitude at sea.
- 11Two pieces of wood which form the arched forward part of a saddle tree.
- 12The part of a key that is not inserted into the lock and that is used to turn the key.
- 13Either of the two handles of a pair of scissors.
Etymology
From Middle English bowe, from Old English boga, Proto-West Germanic *bogō, from Proto-Germanic *bugô. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Booge (“arch, bow, curve”), West Frisian bôge (“arc, arch, bow”), Dutch boog (“arc, arch, bow”), German Bogen (“arc, arch, bow, curve”), Luxembourgish Bou (“arc, arch, bow, curve”), Vilamovian böga (“arc, arch, bend, bow, curve”), Yiddish בויגן (boygn, “arc, arch, bow, curve”), Danish bue (“arc, arch, bow, curve”), Faroese, Icelandic bogi (“arch, bow, vault”), Jamtish buga (“bow”), Norwegian Bokmål bue (“arc, arch, bow”), Norwegian Nynorsk boge (“arc, arch, bow”), Swedish båge (“bow”), Crimean Gothic boga (“bow”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #4,287 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: