devil
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "devil", 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 "devil" 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 "devil" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
devil is aEnglishname. It means: The chief devil; Satan. Pronounced /ˈdɛvəl/. It ranks #4,296 in English word frequency. Often confused with devs and devo.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | devil |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Name |
| IPA | /ˈdɛvəl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #4,296 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for devil is 5 letters long, classified as aname, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdɛvəl/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,296 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "The chief devil; Satan.".
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for devil, with forms such as "ddevil", "deivl", and "devill". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "devs", "devo", "Devon", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwísder. Ancient Greek διά (diá) Ancient Greek δια- (dia-) Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-der. Proto-Hellenic *gʷəlnō Ancient Greek βᾰ́λλω (bắllō) Ancient Greek διαβάλλω (diabállō) Ancient Greek διά… 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 devil, spelled D-E-V-I-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The chief devil; Satan.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwísder. Ancient Greek διά (diá) Ancient Greek δια- (dia-) Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-der. Proto-Hellenic *gʷəlnō Ancient Greek βᾰ́λλω (bắllō) Ancient Greek διαβάλλω (diabállō) Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos)bor. Latin diabolusbor. Proto-West Germanic *diubul Old English dēofol Middle English devel English devil From Middle English devil, devel, deovel, from Old English dēofol, from Proto-West Germanic *diubul, from Latin diabolus, ultimately from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos, “false accuser, slanderer”), also as "Satan" (in Jewish/Christian usage, translating Biblical Hebrew שָׂטָן (śātān)), from διαβάλλω (diabállō, “to slander”), literally “to throw across”, from διά (diá, “through, across”) + βάλλω (bállō, “throw”). The Old English word was probably adopted under influence of Latin diabolus (itself from the Greek). Other Germanic languages adopted the word independently: compare Saterland Frisian Düüwel (“devil”), West Frisian duvel (“devil”), Dutch duivel, duvel (“devil”), German Low German Düvel (“devil”), German Teufel (“devil”), Bavarian Teifl (“devil”), Danish djævel (“devil”), Swedish djävul (“devil”) (older: djefvul, Old Swedish diævul, Old Norse djǫfull). Doublet of diable, diablo, and diabolus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddevil,deivl,devill,devli,devvil,dveil,edvil
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for devil
Misspelling Variants of "devil"
Frequency rank: #4,296 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: