develop
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "develop", 7-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 "develop" 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 "develop" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
develop is aEnglishverb. It means: To discover, find out; to uncover. Pronounced /dɪˈvɛl.əp/. It ranks #1,820 in English word frequency. Often confused with developed and developer.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | develop |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /dɪˈvɛl.əp/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,820 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for develop is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɪˈvɛl.əp/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,820 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for develop, with forms such as "ddevelop", "deevlop", and "devellop". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "developed", "developer", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from French développer, from Middle French desveloper, from Old French desveloper, from des- + voloper, veloper, vloper (“to wrap, wrap up”) (compare Italian sviluppare, Old Italian alternative form goluppare (“to wrap”)) from Vulgar Latin *vloppō,… 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 develop, spelled D-E-V-E-L-O-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To discover, find out; to uncover.
- 2To change with a specific direction, progress.
- 3To progress through a sequence of stages.
- 4To advance; to further; to promote the growth of.
- 5To create.
- 6To bring out images latent in photographic film.
- 7To acquire something usually over a period of time.
- 8To place one's pieces actively.
- 9To cause a ball to become more open and available to be played on later. Usually by moving it away from the cushion, or by opening a pack.
- 10To change the form of (an algebraic expression, etc.) by executing certain indicated operations without changing the value.
Etymology
Borrowed from French développer, from Middle French desveloper, from Old French desveloper, from des- + voloper, veloper, vloper (“to wrap, wrap up”) (compare Italian sviluppare, Old Italian alternative form goluppare (“to wrap”)) from Vulgar Latin *vloppō, *wloppō (“to wrap”) ultimately from Proto-Germanic *wrappaną, *wlappaną (“to wrap, roll up, turn, wind”), from Proto-Indo-European *werb- (“to turn, bend”) http://www.wordnik.com/words/envelop. Akin to Middle English wlappen (“to wrap, fold”) (Modern English lap (“to wrap, involve, fold”)), Middle English wrappen (“to wrap”), Middle Dutch lappen (“to wrap up, embrace”), dialectal Danish vravle (“to wind, twist”), Middle Low German wrempen (“to wrinkle, scrunch, distort”), Old English wearp (“warp”). The word acquired its modern meaning from the 17th-century belief that an egg contains the animal in miniature and matures by growing larger and shedding its envelopes.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddevelop,deevlop,devellop,developp,develpo,deveolp,devleop,devvelop,dveelop,edvelop
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for develop
Misspelling Variants of "develop"
Frequency rank: #1,820 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: