brain
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "brain", 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 "brain" 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 "brain" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
brain is aEnglishnoun. It means: The control center of the central nervous system of an animal located in the skull which is responsible for perception, cognition, attention, memory, emotion, and action. Pronounced /bɹeɪn/. It ranks #1,215 in English word frequency. Often confused with Bri and Brit.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | brain |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɹeɪn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,215 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for brain is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɹeɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,215 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for brain, with forms such as "barin", "bbrain", and "brainn". 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, "Bri", "Brit", "brat", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English brayn, brain, from Old English bræġn (“brain”), from Proto-West Germanic *bragn, from Proto-Germanic *bragną (“brain”), from Proto-Indo-European *mregʰnom (“skull, brain”), from Proto-Indo-European *mregʰ- (“marrow, sinciput”) + *-mn̥ (“… 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 brain, spelled B-R-A-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The control center of the central nervous system of an animal located in the skull which is responsible for perception, cognition, attention, memory, emotion, and action.
- 2The control center of the central nervous system of an animal located in the skull which is responsible for perception, cognition, attention, memory, emotion, and action.
- 3The control center of the central nervous system of an animal located in the skull which is responsible for perception, cognition, attention, memory, emotion, and action.
- 4Mind.
- 5Intellect.
- 6An intelligent person.
- 7An intelligent person.
- 8An intelligent person.
- 9By analogy with a human brain, the part of a machine or computer that performs calculations.
- 10Oral sex.
- 11A loose compartment of a backpack that straps on over the top opening.
Etymology
From Middle English brayn, brain, from Old English bræġn (“brain”), from Proto-West Germanic *bragn, from Proto-Germanic *bragną (“brain”), from Proto-Indo-European *mregʰnom (“skull, brain”), from Proto-Indo-European *mregʰ- (“marrow, sinciput”) + *-mn̥ (“nominal suffix”). Cognate with Scots braine, brane (“brain”), North Frisian brayen, brein, Brain (“brain”), Saterland Frisian Brainge, Bräienge (“brain”), West Frisian brein (“brain”), Dutch brein (“brain”), Low German Brägen, Bregen (“brain”) (whence German Bregen (“animal brain”)), Ancient Greek βρεχμός (brekhmós, “front part of the skull, top of the head”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: barin,bbrain,brainn,brani,brrain,rbain
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for brain
Misspelling Variants of "brain"
Frequency rank: #1,215 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: