brad
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "brad", 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 "brad" 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 "brad" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
brad is aEnglishnoun. It means: A thin, small nail, with a slight projection at the top on one side instead of a head, or occasionally with a small domed head, similar to that of an escutcheon pin. Pronounced /bɹad/. It ranks #5,861 in English word frequency. Often confused with bro and bud.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | brad |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɹad/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,861 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for brad is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɹad/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,861 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for brad, with forms such as "bbrad", "bradd", and "brda". 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, "bro", "bud", "BRB", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Late Middle English brad, variant of brod(d), from Old Norse broddr (“spike, shaft”), from Proto-Germanic *bruzdaz (compare Old English brord, Old High German brort), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrusdʰos (compare Welsh brath (“sting, prick”), Albanian bredh … 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 brad, spelled B-R-A-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A thin, small nail, with a slight projection at the top on one side instead of a head, or occasionally with a small domed head, similar to that of an escutcheon pin.
- 2A paper fastener, a fastening device formed of thin, soft metal, such as shim brass, with a round head and a flat, split shank, which is spread after insertion in a hole in a stack of pages, in much the same way as a cotter pin or a split rivet.
Etymology
Late Middle English brad, variant of brod(d), from Old Norse broddr (“spike, shaft”), from Proto-Germanic *bruzdaz (compare Old English brord, Old High German brort), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrusdʰos (compare Welsh brath (“sting, prick”), Albanian bredh (“fir-tree”), Lithuanian bruzdùklis (“bridle”), Czech brzda (“brake”). Doublet of prod.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbrad,bradd,brda,brrad,rbad
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for brad
Misspelling Variants of "brad"
Frequency rank: #5,861 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: