choose
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "choose", 6-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 "choose" 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 "choose" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
choose is aEnglishverb. It means: To pick; to make the choice of; to select. Pronounced /t͡ʃuːz/. It ranks #1,296 in English word frequency. Often confused with coos and close.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | choose |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /t͡ʃuːz/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,296 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 19 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for choose is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /t͡ʃuːz/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,296 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 choose, with forms such as "cchoose", "chhoose", and "chooes". 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 19 confusable-pair relationships, "coos", "close", "chose", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English cheosen, chesen, from Old English ċēosan (“to choose, seek out, select, elect, decide, test, accept, settle for, approve”), from Proto-West Germanic *keusan, from Proto-Germanic *keusaną (“to taste, choose”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵé… 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 choose, spelled C-H-O-O-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To pick; to make the choice of; to select.
- 2To elect.
- 3To decide to act in a certain way.
- 4To prefer; to wish; to desire.
Etymology
From Middle English cheosen, chesen, from Old English ċēosan (“to choose, seek out, select, elect, decide, test, accept, settle for, approve”), from Proto-West Germanic *keusan, from Proto-Germanic *keusaną (“to taste, choose”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵéwseti, from *ǵews- (“to taste, try”). Cognate with Scots chuise, cheese (“to choose”), North Frisian kese (“to choose”), Saterland Frisian kjoze (“to choose”), West Frisian kieze (“to choose”), Dutch kiezen (“to choose”), French choisir (“to choose”), Low German kesen (“to choose”), German Low German kiesen (“to pick, select”), archaic and partially obsolete German kiesen (“to choose”), Danish kyse (“to frighten (via ‘to charm, allure’ and ‘to enchant’)”), Norwegian kjose (“to choose”), Swedish tjusa (“to charm, allure, enchant”), Icelandic kjósa (“to choose, vote, elect”), Gothic 𐌺𐌹𐌿𐍃𐌰𐌽 (kiusan, “to test”), Latin gustō (“to taste, sample”), Ancient Greek γεύω (geúō, “to feed”), Sanskrit जोषति (jóṣati, “to like, enjoy”), Russian кушать (kúšatʹ, “to have a meal, to eat”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cchoose,chhoose,chooes,choosse,chosoe,cohose,hcoose
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for choose
Misspelling Variants of "choose"
Frequency rank: #1,296 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: