context
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "context", 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 "context" 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 "context" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
context is aEnglishnoun. It means: The surroundings, circumstances, environment, background or settings that determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of an event or other occurrence. Pronounced /ˈkɒn.tɛkst/. It ranks #2,336 in English word frequency. Often confused with cortex and convex.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | context |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkɒn.tɛkst/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #2,336 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 16 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for context is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkɒn.tɛkst/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,336 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for context, with forms such as "ccontext", "cnotext", and "conetxt". 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 16 confusable-pair relationships, "cortex", "convex", "convert", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin context(us). 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 context, spelled C-O-N-T-E-X-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The surroundings, circumstances, environment, background or settings that determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of an event or other occurrence.
- 2The text in which a word or passage appears and which helps ascertain its meaning.
- 3The surroundings and environment in which an artifact is found and which may provide important clues about the artifact's function and/or cultural meaning.
- 4The trama or flesh of a mushroom.
- 5For a formula: a finite set of variables, which set contains all the free variables in the given formula.
- 6The data (register contents, program counter value, etc.) needed to switch to another thread of execution.
Etymology
From Latin context(us).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccontext,cnotext,conetxt,conntext,contetx,contextt,contexxt,conttext,contxet,cotnext,ocntext
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for context
Misspelling Variants of "context"
Frequency rank: #2,336 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: