cover
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 "cover", 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 "cover" 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 "cover" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cover is aEnglishnoun. It means: A lid. Pronounced /ˈkʌvɚ/. It ranks #867 in English word frequency. Often confused with COVID and covet.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cover |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkʌvɚ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #867 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cover is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkʌvɚ/. Corpus data places it at rank #867 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 23 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 cover, with forms such as "ccover", "coevr", and "coverr". 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, "COVID", "covet", "covey", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi Proto-Indo-European *h₂wer- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti L… 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 cover, spelled C-O-V-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A lid.
- 2Area or situation which screens a person or thing from view.
- 3The front and back of a book, magazine, CD package, etc.
- 4The top sheet of a bed.
- 5A cloth or similar material, often fitted, placed over an item such as a car or sofa or food to protect it from dust, rain, insects, etc. when not being used.
- 6A bag or packet.
- 7A cover charge.
- 8A setting at a restaurant table or formal dinner.
- 9A new performance or rerecording of a previously recorded song; a cover version; a cover song.
- 10A fielding position on the off side, between point and mid off, about 30° forward of square; a fielder in this position.
- 11A tarpaulin or other device used to cover the wicket during rain, to prevent it getting wet.
- 12The area of the stumps that is blocked by the batsman so as to defend the wicket.
- 13A backup incase any player sustains injury during nets or midseries. Originally have to be declared part of squad before match.
- 14A collection (or family) of subsets of a given set, whose union contains every element of said original set.
- 15An envelope complete with stamps and postmarks etc.
- 16A solid object, including terrain, that provides protection from enemy fire.
- 17In commercial law, a buyer’s purchase on the open market of goods similar or identical to the goods contracted for after a seller has breached a contract of sale by failure to deliver the goods contracted for.
- 18An insurance contract; coverage by an insurance contract.
- 19A persona maintained by a spy or undercover operative; cover story.
- 20A swindler's confederate.
- 21The portion of a slate, tile, or shingle that is hidden by the overlap of the course above.
- 22In a steam engine, the lap of a slide valve.
- 23The distance between reinforcing steel and the exterior of concrete.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi Proto-Indo-European *h₂wer- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Latin operiō Latin cooperiō Old French covrirbor. Middle English coveren English cover From Middle English coveren, borrowed from Old French covrir, cueuvrir (modern French couvrir), from Late Latin coperire, from Latin cooperiō (“I cover completely”), from co- (intensive prefix) + operiō (“I close, cover”). Displaced native Middle English thecchen and bethecchen (“to cover”) (from Old English þeccan, beþeccan (“to cover”)), Middle English helen, (over)helen, (for)helen (“to cover, conceal”) (from Old English helan (“to conceal, cover, hide”)), Middle English wrien, (be)wreon (“to cover”) (from Old English (be)wrēon (“to cover”)), Middle English hodren, hothren (“to cover up”) (from Low German hudren (“to cover up”)). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the original sense of the verb and noun cover was “hide from view” as in its cognate covert. Except in the limited sense of “cover again”, the word recover is unrelated and is cognate with recuperate. Cognate with Spanish cubrir (“to cover”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccover,coevr,coverr,covre,covver,cvoer,ocver
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cover
Misspelling Variants of "cover"
Frequency rank: #867 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: