broad
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "broad", 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 "broad" 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 "broad" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
broad is anEnglishadj. It means: Wide in extent or scope. Pronounced /bɹɔːd/. It ranks #2,820 in English word frequency. Often confused with bros and brow.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | broad |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /bɹɔːd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,820 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for broad is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɹɔːd/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,820 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 broad, with forms such as "bbroad", "braod", and "broadd". 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, "bros", "brow", "Brom", 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 *bʰer-der.? Proto-Germanic *braidaz Proto-West Germanic *braid Old English brād Middle English brod English broad From Middle English brood, brode, from Old English brād (“broad, flat, open, extended, spacious, wide, ample… 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 broad, spelled B-R-O-A-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Wide in extent or scope.
- 2Extended, in the sense of diffused; open; clear; full.
- 3Having a large measure of any thing or quality; unlimited; unrestrained.
- 4Comprehensive; liberal; enlarged.
- 5Plain; evident.
- 6General rather than specific.
- 7Unsubtle; obvious.
- 8Free; unrestrained; unconfined.
- 9Gross; coarse; indelicate.
- 10Strongly regional.
- 11Velarized, i.e. not palatalized.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰer-der.? Proto-Germanic *braidaz Proto-West Germanic *braid Old English brād Middle English brod English broad From Middle English brood, brode, from Old English brād (“broad, flat, open, extended, spacious, wide, ample, copious”), from Proto-West Germanic *braid, from Proto-Germanic *braidaz (“broad, wide”), of uncertain origin. Cognates Cognate with Yola brode (“broad”), North Frisian bread, breeđ, briad, briid, briidj (“wide”), Saterland Frisian and West Frisian breed (“broad, wide”), Bavarian brad, broad (“broad, wide”), Central Franconian and Luxembourgish breet (“broad, wide”), Dutch breed (“broad, wide”), German breit (“broad, wide”), Vilamovian braat (“broad, wide”), Yiddish ברייט (breyt, “broad, wide”), Danish and Swedish bred (“broad, wide”), Faroese and Icelandic breiður (“broad, wide”), Norwegian Bokmål bred, brei (“broad, wide”), Norwegian Nynorsk brei, breid (“broad, wide”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌰𐌹𐌸𐍃 (braiþs, “broad, wide”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbroad,braod,broadd,broda,brroad,rboad
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for broad
Misspelling Variants of "broad"
Frequency rank: #2,820 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: