den
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "den", 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 "den" 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 "den" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
den is aEnglishnoun. It means: A small cavern or hollow place in the side of a hill, or among rocks; especially, a cave used by a wild animal for shelter or concealment. Pronounced /dɛn/. It ranks #7,004 in English word frequency. Often confused with do and Dr.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | den |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /dɛn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #7,004 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for den is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɛn/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,004 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.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for den 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, "do", "Dr", "di", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English den, from Old English denn (“den, lair (of a beast), cave; a swine-pasture, a woodland pasture for swine”), from Proto-West Germanic *dani (“threshing-floor, barn-floor”). Cognate with Scots den (“den, lair”), Middle Dutch denne (“burrow… 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 den, spelled D-E-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A small cavern or hollow place in the side of a hill, or among rocks; especially, a cave used by a wild animal for shelter or concealment.
- 2A squalid or wretched place; a haunt.
- 3A comfortable room not used for formal entertaining.
- 4Synonym of fort (“structure improvised from furniture, etc. for playing games.”).
- 5A narrow glen; a ravine; a dell.
- 6A group of Cub Scouts of the same age who work on projects together.
Etymology
From Middle English den, from Old English denn (“den, lair (of a beast), cave; a swine-pasture, a woodland pasture for swine”), from Proto-West Germanic *dani (“threshing-floor, barn-floor”). Cognate with Scots den (“den, lair”), Middle Dutch denne (“burrow, den, cave, attic”), Dutch den (“ship's deck, threshing-floor, mountain floor”), Middle Low German denne, danne (“threshing-floor, small dale”), German Tenne (“threshing-floor, barn for threshing”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #7,004 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: