bud
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bud", 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 "bud" 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 "bud" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bud is aEnglishnoun. It means: A newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded. Pronounced /bʌd/. It ranks #6,218 in English word frequency. Often confused with by and BW.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bud |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bʌd/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #6,218 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bud is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bʌd/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,218 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for bud 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", "BW", "BX", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English budde (“bud, seed pod”), from Proto-Germanic *buddǭ (compare Dutch bot (“bud”), German Hagebutte (“hip, rosehip”), regional German Butzen (“seed pod”), Swedish dialect bodd (“head”)), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to sw… 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 bud, spelled B-U-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded.
- 2Something that has begun to develop.
- 3A small rounded body in the process of splitting from an organism, which may grow into a genetically identical new organism.
- 4Potent cannabis taken from the flowering part of the plant (the "bud"), or marijuana generally.
- 5Potent cannabis taken from the flowering part of the plant (the "bud"), or marijuana generally.
- 6A weaned calf in its first year, so called because the horns are then beginning to bud.
- 7A pretty young girl.
Etymology
From Middle English budde (“bud, seed pod”), from Proto-Germanic *buddǭ (compare Dutch bot (“bud”), German Hagebutte (“hip, rosehip”), regional German Butzen (“seed pod”), Swedish dialect bodd (“head”)), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #6,218 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: