depth
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "depth", 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 "depth" 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 "depth" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
depth is aEnglishnoun. It means: the vertical distance below a surface; the degree to which something is deep Pronounced /dɛpθ/. It ranks #2,725 in English word frequency. Often confused with doth and deputy.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | depth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /dɛpθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,725 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 16 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for depth is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɛpθ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,725 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for depth, with forms such as "ddepth", "depht", and "deppth". 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 16 confusable-pair relationships, "doth", "deputy", "depths", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English depthe, from Old English *dīepþ (“depth”), from Proto-Germanic *diupiþō (“depth”), equivalent to deep + -th (abstract nominal suffix). Cognates Cognate with Scots deepth (“depth”), Saterland Frisian Djüpte (“depth”), West Frisian djipte … 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 depth, spelled D-E-P-T-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1the vertical distance below a surface; the degree to which something is deep
- 2the distance between the front and the back, as the depth of a drawer or closet
- 3the intensity, complexity, strength, seriousness or importance of an emotion, situation, etc.
- 4lowness
- 5the total palette of available colors
- 6the property of appearing three-dimensional
- 7the deepest part (usually of a body of water)
- 8a very remote part.
- 9the most severe part
- 10the number of simple elements which an abstract conception or notion includes; the comprehension or content
- 11a pair of toothed wheels which work together
- 12the perpendicular distance from the chord to the farthest point of an arched surface
- 13the lower of the two ranks of a value in an ordered set of values
- 14A set of more than one ciphertext enciphered with the same key.
- 15An invariant of rings and modules, encoding information about dimensionality; see Depth (ring theory).
Etymology
From Middle English depthe, from Old English *dīepþ (“depth”), from Proto-Germanic *diupiþō (“depth”), equivalent to deep + -th (abstract nominal suffix). Cognates Cognate with Scots deepth (“depth”), Saterland Frisian Djüpte (“depth”), West Frisian djipte (“depth; abyss, chasm”), Dutch diepte (“depth”), German Low German, Limburgish Deepde (“depth”), Luxembourgish Déift (“depth”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål dybde (“depth”), Faroese dýpd (“depth”), Icelandic djúp, dýpi, dýpt (“depth”), Norwegian Nynorsk djup, djupn, djupt, dypt (“depth”), Swedish djup (“depth”), Gothic 𐌳𐌹𐌿𐍀𐌹𐌸𐌰 (diupiþa, “depth”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddepth,depht,deppth,depthh,deptth,detph,dpeth,edpth
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for depth
Misspelling Variants of "depth"
Frequency rank: #2,725 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: