development
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
11 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "development", 11-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 "development" 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 "development" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
development is aEnglishnoun. It means: The process of developing; growth, directed change. Pronounced /dɪˈvɛl.əp.mənt/. It ranks #488 in English word frequency. Often confused with developmental.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | development |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /dɪˈvɛl.əp.mənt/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #488 |
| Misspellings tracked | 17 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for development is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɪˈvɛl.əp.mənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #488 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 17 documented wrong-spelling variants for development, with forms such as "ddevelopment", "deevlopment", and "devellopment". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "developmental", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French développement, from Old French desvelopemens (“unrolling”). By surface analysis, develop + -ment. First attested in 1756. 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 development, spelled D-E-V-E-L-O-P-M-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The process of developing; growth, directed change.
- 2The process by which a mature multicellular organism or part of an organism is produced by the addition of new cells.
- 3Something which has developed.
- 4A project consisting of one or more commercial or residential buildings.
- 5The building of such a project.
- 6The application of new ideas to practical problems (cf. research).
- 7The active placement of the pieces, or the process of achieving it.
- 8The process by in which previous material is transformed and restated.
- 9The second section of a piece of music in sonata form, in which the original theme is revisited in altered and varying form.
- 10The expression of a function in the form of a series.
- 11The processing of photographic film so as to bring out the images latent in it.
Etymology
From French développement, from Old French desvelopemens (“unrolling”). By surface analysis, develop + -ment. First attested in 1756.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddevelopment,deevlopment,devellopment,develompent,developemnt,developmennt,developmentt,developmetn,developmment,developmnet,developpment,develpoment,deveolpment,devleopment,devvelopment,dveelopment,edvelopment
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for development
Misspelling Variants of "development"
Frequency rank: #488 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: