crane
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "crane", 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 "crane" 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 "crane" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
crane is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any bird of the family Gruidae, large birds with long legs and a long neck which is extended during flight. Pronounced /kɹeɪn/. It ranks #8,021 in English word frequency. Often confused with crap and Cree.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | crane |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kɹeɪn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #8,021 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for crane is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɹeɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,021 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 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for crane, with forms such as "ccrane", "craen", and "cranne". 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, "crap", "Cree", "cray", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English crane, from Old English cran (“crane”), from Proto-West Germanic *kran, *kranō, from Proto-Germanic *kranô (“crane”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to cry hoarsely”). Cognate with Scots cran (“crane”), Dutch kraan (“crane”), German … 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 crane, spelled C-R-A-N-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any bird of the family Gruidae, large birds with long legs and a long neck which is extended during flight.
- 2Ardea herodias, the great blue heron.
- 3A mechanical lifting machine or device, often used for lifting heavy loads for industrial or construction purposes.
- 4An iron arm with horizontal motion, attached to the side or back of a fireplace for supporting kettles etc. over the fire.
- 5A siphon, or bent pipe, for drawing liquors out of a cask.
- 6A forked post or projecting bracket to support spars, etc.; generally used in pairs.
Etymology
From Middle English crane, from Old English cran (“crane”), from Proto-West Germanic *kran, *kranō, from Proto-Germanic *kranô (“crane”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to cry hoarsely”). Cognate with Scots cran (“crane”), Dutch kraan (“crane”), German Low German Kroon (“crane”), German Kran (“crane”). The mechanical devices are named from their likeness to the bird.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccrane,craen,cranne,crnae,crrane,rcane
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for crane
Misspelling Variants of "crane"
Frequency rank: #8,021 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: