choir
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "choir", 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 "choir" 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 "choir" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
choir is aEnglishnoun. It means: A group of people who sing together; a company of people who are trained to sing together. Pronounced /kwaɪə(ɹ)/. It ranks #8,522 in English word frequency. Often confused with cor and CHR.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | choir |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kwaɪə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #8,522 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for choir is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kwaɪə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,522 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 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for choir, with forms such as "cchoir", "chhoir", and "chior". 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, "cor", "CHR", "coin", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English quer, quere, from Old French quer, from Latin chorus, from Ancient Greek χορός (khorós, “company of dancers or singers”). Modern spelling influenced by chorus and French chœur. Doublet of quire, chorus, and hora. 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 choir, spelled C-H-O-I-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A group of people who sing together; a company of people who are trained to sing together.
- 2One quarter of a cruciform church, or the architectural area of a church, generally used by the choir; often near the apse.
- 3One of the nine ranks or orders of angels.
- 4Set of strings (one per note) for a harpsichord.
Etymology
From Middle English quer, quere, from Old French quer, from Latin chorus, from Ancient Greek χορός (khorós, “company of dancers or singers”). Modern spelling influenced by chorus and French chœur. Doublet of quire, chorus, and hora.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cchoir,chhoir,chior,choirr,chori,cohir,hcoir
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for choir
Misspelling Variants of "choir"
Frequency rank: #8,522 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: