deviation
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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9 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "deviation", 9-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 "deviation" 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 "deviation" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
deviation is aEnglishnoun. It means: The act of deviating; wandering off the correct or true path or road. Pronounced /ˌdiː.viˈeɪʃən/. Often confused with devotion and divination.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | deviation |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌdiː.viˈeɪʃən/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #17,119 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for deviation is 9 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌdiː.viˈeɪʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #17,119 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 13 documented wrong-spelling variants for deviation, with forms such as "ddeviation", "deivation", and "devaition". 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 6 confusable-pair relationships, "devotion", "divination", "depiction", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle French deviation, from Medieval Latin deviatio. Morphologically deviate + -ion. 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 deviation, spelled D-E-V-I-A-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The act of deviating; wandering off the correct or true path or road.
- 2A departure from the correct way of acting.
- 3The state or result of having deviated; a transgression; an act of sin; an error; an offense.
- 4A detour in a road or railway.
- 5A detour to one side of the originally-planned flightpath (for instance, to avoid weather); the act of making such a detour.
- 6The voluntary and unnecessary departure of a ship from, or delay in, the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured, thus releasing the underwriters from their responsibility.
- 7The shortest distance between the center of the target and the point where a projectile hits or bursts.
- 8For interval variables and ratio variables, a measure of difference between the observed value and the mean.
- 9The signed difference between a value and its reference value.
Etymology
From Middle French deviation, from Medieval Latin deviatio. Morphologically deviate + -ion.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddeviation,deivation,devaition,deviaiton,deviasion,deviatino,deviationn,deviatoin,deviattion,devitaion,devviation,dveiation,edviation
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for deviation
Misspelling Variants of "deviation"
Frequency rank: #17,119 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: