cloud
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cloud", 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 "cloud" 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 "cloud" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cloud is aEnglishnoun. It means: A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air. Pronounced /klaʊd/. It ranks #3,219 in English word frequency. Often confused with cod and club.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cloud |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /klaʊd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,219 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cloud is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /klaʊd/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,219 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for cloud, with forms such as "ccloud", "clloud", and "clodu". 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, "cod", "club", "cold", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English cloud, from Old English clūd (“mass of stone, rock, boulder, hill”), from Proto-West Germanic *klūt, from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz, *klutaz (“lump, mass, conglomeration”), from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to ball up, clench”). Cognate with… 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 cloud, spelled C-L-O-U-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
- 2Any mass of dust, steam or smoke resembling such a mass.
- 3Anything which makes things foggy or gloomy.
- 4Anything unsubstantial.
- 5A dark spot on a lighter material or background.
- 6A group or swarm, especially suspended above the ground or flying.
- 7An elliptical shape or symbol whose outline is a series of semicircles, supposed to resemble a cloud.
- 8A telecom network (from their representation in engineering drawings).
- 9The Internet, regarded as an abstract amorphous omnipresent space for processing and storage, the focus of cloud computing.
- 10A negative or foreboding aspect of something positive: see every cloud has a silver lining or every silver lining has a cloud.
- 11Crystal methamphetamine.
- 12A large, loosely-knitted headscarf worn by women.
- 13A white cat.
- 14A rock; boulder; a hill.
Etymology
From Middle English cloud, from Old English clūd (“mass of stone, rock, boulder, hill”), from Proto-West Germanic *klūt, from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz, *klutaz (“lump, mass, conglomeration”), from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to ball up, clench”). Cognate with Scots clood, clud (“cloud”), Dutch kluit (“lump, mass, clod”), German Low German Kluut, Kluute (“lump, mass, ball”), German Kloß (“lump, ball, dumpling”), Danish klode (“sphere, orb, planet”), Swedish klot (“sphere, orb, ball, globe”), Icelandic klót (“knob on a sword's hilt”). Related to English clod, clot, clump, club. Largely replaced Middle English wolken, from Old English wolcn (whence Modern English welkin), the commonest Germanic word (compare Dutch wolk, German Wolke).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccloud,clloud,clodu,cloudd,cluod,lcoud
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cloud
Misspelling Variants of "cloud"
Frequency rank: #3,219 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: