cochlea
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cochlea", 7-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 "cochlea" 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 "cochlea" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cochlea is aEnglishnoun. It means: The complex, spirally coiled, tapered cavity of the inner ear of higher vertebrates, which contains the organ of Corti and in which sound vibrations are converted into nerve impulses. Pronounced /ˈkɒk.li.ə/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cochlea |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkɒk.li.ə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #68,942 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cochlea is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkɒk.li.ə/. Corpus data places it at rank #68,942 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for cochlea in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Latin cochlea (“a snail”), from Ancient Greek κόχλιας (kókhlias, “a snail with a spiral shell”). 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 cochlea, spelled C-O-C-H-L-E-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The complex, spirally coiled, tapered cavity of the inner ear of higher vertebrates, which contains the organ of Corti and in which sound vibrations are converted into nerve impulses.
- 2A spiral-shaped shell, especially that of a snail.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin cochlea (“a snail”), from Ancient Greek κόχλιας (kókhlias, “a snail with a spiral shell”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #68,942 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: