cult
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cult", 4-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 "cult" 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 "cult" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cult is aEnglishnoun. It means: The veneration, devotion, and religious rites given to a deity (especially in a historical polytheistic context), or (in a Christian context) to a saint; a subset of worship. Pronounced /kʌlt/. It ranks #6,122 in English word frequency. Often confused with cut and cup.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cult |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kʌlt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #6,122 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cult is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kʌlt/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,122 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 3 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 cult, with forms such as "ccult", "clut", and "cullt". 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, "cut", "cup", "cum", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Derived from French culte, from Latin cultus (“care, adoration; cult”), from colō (“cultivate; protect”). 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 cult, spelled C-U-L-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The veneration, devotion, and religious rites given to a deity (especially in a historical polytheistic context), or (in a Christian context) to a saint; a subset of worship.
- 2A group of people having an obsession with or intense admiration for a particular activity, idea, person or thing.
- 3A group, sect or movement following an unorthodox religious or philosophical system of beliefs, especially one in which members remove and exclude themselves from greater society, including family members not part of the cult, and show extreme devotion to a charismatic leader.
Etymology
Derived from French culte, from Latin cultus (“care, adoration; cult”), from colō (“cultivate; protect”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccult,clut,cullt,cultt,cutl,uclt
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cult
Misspelling Variants of "cult"
Frequency rank: #6,122 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: