calabash
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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8 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "calabash", 8-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "calabash" 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 "calabash" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
calabash is aEnglishnoun. It means: A tree (known as the calabash tree; Crescentia cujete) native to Central and South America, the West Indies, and southern Florida, bearing large, round fruit used to make containers (sense 3); the ... Pronounced /ˈkaləbaʃ/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | calabash |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkaləbaʃ/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #68,905 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for calabash is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkaləbaʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #68,905 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for calabash in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French calebasse, from Spanish calabaza (“gourd; pumpkin”), possibly from Arabic قَرْعَةٌ يَابِسَةٌ (qarʕatun yābisatun, “dry gourd”) or directly from its etymon Persian خربزه (xarboze, “melon”), possibly ultimately from Sanskrit त्रपुस (trapusa, “colo… 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 calabash, spelled C-A-L-A-B-A-S-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A tree (known as the calabash tree; Crescentia cujete) native to Central and South America, the West Indies, and southern Florida, bearing large, round fruit used to make containers (sense 3); the fruit of this tree.
- 2The bottle gourd (calabash vine, Lagenaria siceraria), believed to have originated in Africa, which is grown for its fruit that are used as a vegetable and to make containers (sense 3); the fruit of this plant.
- 3A container made from the mature, dried shell of the fruit of one of the above plants; also, a similarly shaped container made from some other material.
- 4A calabash and its contents; as much as fills such a container.
- 5A musical instrument, most commonly a drum or rattle, made from a calabash fruit.
Etymology
From French calebasse, from Spanish calabaza (“gourd; pumpkin”), possibly from Arabic قَرْعَةٌ يَابِسَةٌ (qarʕatun yābisatun, “dry gourd”) or directly from its etymon Persian خربزه (xarboze, “melon”), possibly ultimately from Sanskrit त्रपुस (trapusa, “colocynth fruit”) (compare Persian تربزه (tarboze, “watermelon”)). The English word is cognate with Catalan carabassa (“pumpkin; orange colour”), Galician cabaza (“gourd, pumpkin, squash; calabash (container)”), Occitan calebasso, carabasso, carbasso, Portuguese cabaça (“gourd; calabash (container)”), Sicilian caravazza (and caramazza).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #68,905 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: