capable
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "capable", 7-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 "capable" 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 "capable" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
capable is anEnglishadj. It means: Able and efficient; having the ability needed for a specific task; having the disposition to do something; permitting or being susceptible to something. Pronounced /ˈkeɪ.pə.bəl/. It ranks #2,429 in English word frequency. Often confused with capsule and curable.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | capable |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈkeɪ.pə.bəl/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #2,429 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for capable is 7 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkeɪ.pə.bəl/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,429 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for capable, with forms such as "acpable", "caapble", and "capabble". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "capsule", "curable", "culpable", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Middle French capable, from Late Latin capābilis. 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 capable, spelled C-A-P-A-B-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Able and efficient; having the ability needed for a specific task; having the disposition to do something; permitting or being susceptible to something.
- 2Of sufficient capacity or size for holding, containing, receiving or taking in; accessible to. Construed with of, for or an infinitive.
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French capable, from Late Latin capābilis.
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acpable,caapble,capabble,capabel,capablle,capalbe,capbale,capible,cappable,ccapable,cpaable
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for capable
Misspelling Variants of "capable"
Frequency rank: #2,429 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: