carol
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "carol", 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 "carol" 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 "carol" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
carol is aEnglishnoun. It means: A round dance accompanied by singing. Pronounced /ˈkæɹəl/. It ranks #6,879 in English word frequency. Often confused with col and CRO.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | carol |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkæɹəl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #6,879 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for carol is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkæɹəl/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,879 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 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 carol, with forms such as "acrol", "caorl", and "caroll". 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, "col", "CRO", "cool", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English carole (“round dance with singing; group of people dancing and singing in a circle; song by carollers, carol; religious poem or song; circular thing; braid, chain (?); stall for study or writing; writing table”), from… 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 carol, spelled C-A-R-O-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A round dance accompanied by singing.
- 2A ballad or song of joy.
- 3A ballad or song of joy.
- 4A small closet or enclosure built against the inner side of a window of a monastery's cloister, to sit in for study.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English carole (“round dance with singing; group of people dancing and singing in a circle; song by carollers, carol; religious poem or song; circular thing; braid, chain (?); stall for study or writing; writing table”), from Old French carole (“round dance with singing”). The further etymology is uncertain; the following possibilities have been suggested: * From Old Italian carola, or directly from its etymon Medieval Latin choraula, a variant of choraulēs (“flute player accompanying a chorus dance”), from Ancient Greek χοραυλής (khoraulḗs, “one who accompanies a chorus on the flute”), from χορός (khorós, “choir; dance”) + αὐλός (aulós, “flute”). * From Latin corōlla (“little crown, coronet; small chaplet, garland, or wreath”), from corōna (“chaplet, garland, wreath”) + -la (diminutive suffix). Corōna is borrowed from Ancient Greek κορώνη (korṓnē, “type of crown; curved object (door handle, tip of a bow, stern of a ship, etc.)”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Compare chorus, terpsichorean. Noun noun sense 3 (“small closet or enclosure”) may refer to the fact that the item encloses or surrounds the person using it. The verb is derived from Middle English carolen (“to dance and/or sing in a round dance; to sing for (dancers in a round dance); (figurative) to spend time noisily or unprofitably”), from Old French caroler (“to sing”), from carole (noun) (see above) + -er (a variant of -ier (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acrol,caorl,caroll,carrol,ccarol,craol
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for carol
Misspelling Variants of "carol"
Frequency rank: #6,879 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: