cymbal

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for cymbal is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɪmbəl/. Corpus data places it at rank #47,558 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A concave plate of metal, usually brass or bronze, that produces a sharp, ringing sound when struck: played either in pairs, by striking them together, or singly by striking with a drumstick or the...".

Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for cymbal, with forms such as "ccymbal", "cmybal", and "cybmal". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 4 confusable-pair relationships, "cymbals", "symbol", "cabal", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English cymbal, from Old English cimbal, cimbala and Old French cimbale, both from Latin cymbalum (“cymbal”), from Ancient Greek κύμβαλον (kúmbalon), from κύμβη (kúmbē, “bowl”). See also chime. The correct English form is cymbal, spelled C-Y-M-B-A-L.