demur
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "demur", 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 "demur" 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 "demur" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
demur is aEnglishverb. It means: Chiefly followed by to, and sometimes by at or on: to object or be reluctant; to balk, to take exception. Pronounced /dɪˈmɜː/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | demur |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /dɪˈmɜː/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for demur is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɪˈmɜː/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for demur in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: PIE word *de From Middle English demuren (“to delay; to linger; to remain (in office); to keep, retain (?)”), from Anglo-Norman demorer and Old French demorer, demourer (“to remain, stay”) (modern French demeurer), from Vulgar Latin dēmorāre, from Latin dē… 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 demur, spelled D-E-M-U-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Chiefly followed by to, and sometimes by at or on: to object or be reluctant; to balk, to take exception.
- 2To submit a demurrer (“motion by a party to a legal action for the immediate or summary judgment of the court on the question of whether, assuming the truth of the matter alleged by the opposite party, it is sufficient in law to sustain the action or defence, and hence whether the party bringing the motion is required to answer or proceed further”).
- 3To endure, to last.
- 4To linger, to tarry.
- 5To remain, to stay.
- 6To suspend judgment or proceedings because of a difficulty or doubt; to put off the conclusion or determination of a matter; to delay, to hesitate, to pause.
- 7To have doubts; to be doubtful.
- 8Followed by upon: to be captivated or fixated; to dwell on, to linger.
- 9To object or take exception to (something).
- 10To cause delay to (someone or something); to put off.
- 11To have doubts or hesitate about (something).
Etymology
PIE word *de From Middle English demuren (“to delay; to linger; to remain (in office); to keep, retain (?)”), from Anglo-Norman demorer and Old French demorer, demourer (“to remain, stay”) (modern French demeurer), from Vulgar Latin dēmorāre, from Latin dēmorārī, the present active infinitive of Latin dēmoror (“to delay, detain; to linger, tarry”), from de- (intensifying prefix) + moror (“to delay, detain; to hinder, impede; to linger, loiter”) (from mora (“a delay; hindrance, obstacle”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mer- (“to fall into thinking; to remember”), probably referring to a time for thinking) + -or (variant of -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: