burn
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 "burn", 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 "burn" 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 "burn" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
burn is aEnglishnoun. It means: A physical injury caused by heat, cold, electricity, radiation or caustic chemicals. Pronounced /bɜːn/. It ranks #2,821 in English word frequency. Often confused with but and buy.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | burn |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɜːn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,821 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for burn is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɜːn/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,821 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 burn, with forms such as "bburn", "brun", and "bunr". 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, "but", "buy", "bus", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English bernen (collateral form of brennen), from Old English birnan (“to burn”), metathesis from Proto-West Germanic *brinnan, from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw-, present stem from *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of… 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 burn, spelled B-U-R-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A physical injury caused by heat, cold, electricity, radiation or caustic chemicals.
- 2A sensation resembling such an injury.
- 3The act of burning something with fire.
- 4An intense non-physical sting, as left by shame or an effective insult.
- 5An effective insult, often in the expression sick burn (excellent or badass insult).
- 6Physical sensation in the muscles following strenuous exercise, caused by build-up of lactic acid.
- 7Tobacco.
- 8The writing of data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip.
- 9The operation or result of burning or baking, as in brickmaking.
- 10A disease in vegetables; brand.
- 11The firing of a spacecraft's rockets in order to change its course.
Etymology
From Middle English bernen (collateral form of brennen), from Old English birnan (“to burn”), metathesis from Proto-West Germanic *brinnan, from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw-, present stem from *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of brew. Cognate with Cimbrian prönnan (“to burn”), Dutch barnen, branden (“to burn”), German brinnen (“to burn”), Luxembourgish brennen (“to burn”), Vilamovian brīn (“to burn”), Yiddish ברענען (brenen, “to burn”), Danish brænde (“to burn”), Faroese, Icelandic brenna (“to burn”), Norwegian Bokmål brenne (“to burn”), Norwegian Nynorsk brenna, brenne (“to burn”), Swedish brinna (“to burn”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 (brinnan, “to burn”). See also Middle Irish brennim (“drink up”), bruinnim (“bubble up”); also Middle Irish bréo (“flame”), Albanian burth (“Cyclamen hederifolium, mouth burning”), Sanskrit भुरति (bhurati, “moves quickly, twitches, fidgets”). More at brew.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bburn,brun,bunr,burnn,burrn,ubrn
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for burn
Misspelling Variants of "burn"
Frequency rank: #2,821 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: