cow
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cow", 3-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 "cow" 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 "cow" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cow is aEnglishnoun. It means: An adult female of the species Bos taurus, especially one that has calved. Pronounced /kaʊ/. It ranks #5,670 in English word frequency. Often confused with CT and CR.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kaʊ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,670 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cow is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kaʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,670 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for cow in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "CT", "CR", "cs", 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 *gʷṓws Proto-Germanic *kōz Proto-West Germanic *kō Old English cū Middle English cow English cow Inherited from Middle English cow, cou, from Old English cū (“cow”), from Proto-West Germanic *kō, from Proto-Germanic *kōz (… 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 cow, spelled C-O-W, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An adult female of the species Bos taurus, especially one that has calved.
- 2Any member of the species Bos taurus that is not of a bucking breed or fighting breed, regardless of sex or age, including steers and calves.
- 3Beef: the meat of cattle as food.
- 4Any bovines or bovids generally, including yaks, buffalo, etc.
- 5A female member of other large species of mammal, including the bovines, moose, whales, seals, hippos, rhinos, manatees, and elephants.
- 6A woman considered unpleasant in some way, particularly one considered nasty, stupid, fat, lazy, or difficult.
- 7A chock: a wedge or brake used to stop a machine or car.
- 8A third-year cadet at West Point.
- 9A fish that is very large for its species, such as a large striped bass or large bluefin tuna.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʷṓws Proto-Germanic *kōz Proto-West Germanic *kō Old English cū Middle English cow English cow Inherited from Middle English cow, cou, from Old English cū (“cow”), from Proto-West Germanic *kō, from Proto-Germanic *kōz (“cow”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷṓws (“cow”). Cognate with Sanskrit गो (go), Ancient Greek βοῦς (boûs), Persian گاو (gâv)), Latvian govs (“cow”), Proto-Slavic *govędo (Serbo-Croatian govedo, Russian говядина (govjadina, “beef”), Scots coo (“cow”), North Frisian ko, kø (“cow”), West Frisian ko (“cow”), Dutch koe (“cow”), Low German Koh, Koo, Kau (“cow”), German Kuh (“cow”), Swedish ko (“cow”), Norwegian ku (“cow”), Icelandic kýr (“cow”), Latin bōs (“ox, bull, cow”) (whence English beef), Armenian կով (kov, “cow”). Doublet of beef. The plural kine is from Middle English kyne, kyn, kuin, kiin, kien (“cows”), either a double plural of Middle English ky, kye (“cows”), equivalent to modern kye + -en, or inherited from Old English cūna (“cows', of cows”), genitive plural of cū (“cow”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #5,670 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: