cell
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 "cell", 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 "cell" 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 "cell" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cell is aEnglishnoun. It means: A single-room dwelling for a hermit. Pronounced /sɛl/. It ranks #1,419 in English word frequency. Often confused with Cl and CEO.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cell |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /sɛl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,419 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cell is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sɛl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,419 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 23 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 3 documented wrong-spelling variants for cell, with forms such as "ccell", "clel", and "ecll". 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, "Cl", "CEO", "col", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English celle, selle, from Old English cell (attested in inflected forms), from Latin cella (“chamber, small room, compartment”), later reinforced by Old French cel, sele, Old French cele. Ultimately from Proto-Italic *kelnā, from Proto-Indo-Eur… 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 cell, spelled C-E-L-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A single-room dwelling for a hermit.
- 2A small monastery or nunnery dependent on a larger religious establishment.
- 3A small room in a monastery or nunnery accommodating one person.
- 4A room in a prison or jail for one or more inmates.
- 5Each of the small hexagonal compartments in a honeycomb.
- 6Any of various chambers in a tissue or organism having specific functions.
- 7The discal cell of the wing of a lepidopteran insect.
- 8Specifically, any of the supposed compartments of the brain, formerly thought to be the source of specific mental capacities, knowledge, or memories.
- 9A section or compartment of a larger structure.
- 10Any small dwelling; a remote nook, a den.
- 11A device which stores electrical power; used either singly or together in batteries; the basic unit of a battery.
- 12The basic unit of a living organism, consisting of a quantity of protoplasm surrounded by a cell membrane, which is able to synthesize proteins and replicate itself.
- 13A small thunderstorm, caused by convection, that forms ahead of a storm front.
- 14The minimal unit of a cellular automaton that can change state and has an associated behavior.
- 15In FreeCell-type games, a space where one card can be placed.
- 16A small group of people forming part of a larger organization, often an outlawed one.
- 17A short, fixed-length packet, as in asynchronous transfer mode.
- 18A region of radio reception that is a part of a larger radio network.
- 19A three-dimensional facet of a polytope.
- 20The unit in a statistical array (a spreadsheet, for example) where a row and a column intersect.
- 21The space between the ribs of a vaulted roof.
- 22A cella.
- 23An area of an insect wing bounded by veins.
Etymology
From Middle English celle, selle, from Old English cell (attested in inflected forms), from Latin cella (“chamber, small room, compartment”), later reinforced by Old French cel, sele, Old French cele. Ultimately from Proto-Italic *kelnā, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱelneh₂, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to cover”). Doublet of cella and hall.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccell,clel,ecll
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cell
Misspelling Variants of "cell"
Frequency rank: #1,419 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: