church
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 "church", 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 "church" 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 "church" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
church is aEnglishnoun. It means: A Christian house of worship; a building where Christian religious services take place. Pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɜːt͡ʃ/. It ranks #708 in English word frequency. Often confused with couch and churn.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | church |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈt͡ʃɜːt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #708 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for church is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈt͡ʃɜːt͡ʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #708 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for church, with forms such as "cchurch", "chhurch", and "chruch". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "couch", "churn", "clutch", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English chirche, from Old English ċiriċe (“church”), from Proto-West Germanic *kirikā, an early borrowing of Ancient Greek κυριακόν (kuriakón), neuter form of κυριακός (kuriakós, “belonging to the lord”), from κύριος (kúrios, “ruler, lord”), fro… 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 church, spelled C-H-U-R-C-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A Christian house of worship; a building where Christian religious services take place.
- 2Christians collectively seen as a single spiritual community; Christianity; Christendom.
- 3A local group of people who follow the same Christian religious beliefs, local or general.
- 4A particular denomination of Christianity.
- 5Christian worship held at a church; service.
- 6Organized religion in general or a specific religion considered as a political institution.
- 7Any religious group or place of worship; a temple.
- 8Assembly.
Etymology
From Middle English chirche, from Old English ċiriċe (“church”), from Proto-West Germanic *kirikā, an early borrowing of Ancient Greek κυριακόν (kuriakón), neuter form of κυριακός (kuriakós, “belonging to the lord”), from κύριος (kúrios, “ruler, lord”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱewh₁- (“to swell, spread out, be strong, prevail”). Doublet of kirk. additional etymological information For vowel evolution, see bury. Ancient Greek κυριακόν (kuriakón) was used of houses of Christian worship since circa 300 CE, especially in the East, though it was less common in this sense than ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía, “congregation”) or βασιλική (basilikḗ, “royal thing”). An example of the direct Greek-to-Germanic progress of many Christian words, possibly via the Goths; it was probably used by West Germanic people in their pre-Christian period. Cognate with Scots kirk (“church”), West Frisian tsjerke (“church”), Saterland Frisian Säärke (“church”), Dutch kerk (“church”), German Kirche (“church”), Danish kirke (“church”), Swedish kyrka (“church”), Norwegian Bokmål kirke, Norwegian Nynorsk kyrkje (“church”), and Icelandic kirkja (“church”). Also picked up by Slavic, via Old High German chirihha (compare Old Church Slavonic црькꙑ (crĭky), Bulgarian църква (cǎrkva), Russian це́рковь (cérkovʹ)). Romance and Celtic languages use descendants of Latin ecclēsia.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cchurch,chhurch,chruch,chucrh,churcch,churchh,churhc,churrch,cuhrch,hcurch
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for church
Misspelling Variants of "church"
Frequency rank: #708 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: