champion
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "champion", 8-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 "champion" 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 "champion" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
champion is aEnglishnoun. It means: An ongoing winner in a game or contest. Pronounced /ˈt͡ʃæm.pi.ən/. It ranks #2,381 in English word frequency. Often confused with Chapin and campion.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | champion |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈt͡ʃæm.pi.ən/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #2,381 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for champion is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈt͡ʃæm.pi.ən/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,381 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for champion, with forms such as "cahmpion", "cchampion", and "chamipon". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "Chapin", "campion", "champaign", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kh₂em-der. Proto-Indo-European *kh₂ém-po-s Proto-Italic *kampos Latin campusbor. Frankish *kamp Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Germanic *-janą Frankish *-jan Frankish *kampijan Proto-Germanic *-jô Frankish *-jō Frankish… 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 champion, spelled C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An ongoing winner in a game or contest.
- 2Someone who is chosen to represent a group of people in a contest.
- 3Someone who fights for a cause or status.
- 4Someone who fights on another's behalf.
- 5A particularly notable member of a plant species, such as one of great size.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kh₂em-der. Proto-Indo-European *kh₂ém-po-s Proto-Italic *kampos Latin campusbor. Frankish *kamp Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Germanic *-janą Frankish *-jan Frankish *kampijan Proto-Germanic *-jô Frankish *-jō Frankish *kampijōbor. Medieval Latin campiō Old French champiunbor. Middle English champioun English champion From Middle English champioun, from Old French champion, from Medieval Latin campio (“combatant in a duel, champion”), from Frankish *kampijō (“fighter”), from Proto-West Germanic *kampijō (“combat soldier”), a derivative of *kampijan (“to battle, to campaign”), itself a derivative of *kamp (“battlefield, battle”), ultimately a borrowing in West-Germanic from Latin campus (“a field, a plain, a place of action”). By surface analysis champ + -ion. Cognate with Old English cæmpa, cempa (“soldier, warrior, champion”), Old High German kempfeo, kempfo (“fighter, warrior, champion”), whence archaic German Kempfe (“fighter”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cahmpion,cchampion,chamipon,chammpion,champino,championn,champoin,champpion,chapmion,chhampion,chmapion,hcampion
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for champion
Misspelling Variants of "champion"
Frequency rank: #2,381 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: