dish
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "dish", 4-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 "dish" 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 "dish" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
dish is aEnglishnoun. It means: A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle. Pronounced /dɪʃ/. It ranks #5,028 in English word frequency. Often confused with DS and DIY.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dish |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /dɪʃ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,028 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dish is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɪʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,028 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for dish, with forms such as "ddish", "dihs", and "dishh". 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, "DS", "DIY", "DOS", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English dissh, disch, from Old English disċ (“plate; bowl; dish”), from Proto-West Germanic *disk (“table; dish”) (whence also Proto-Slavic *dъska, whence Bulgarian дъска́ (dǎská), Polish deska, Russian доска́ (doská)), Russian чан (čan)) from L… 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 dish, spelled D-I-S-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.
- 2The contents of such a vessel.
- 3A specific type of prepared food.
- 4Tableware (including cutlery, etc, as well as crockery) that is to be or is being washed after being used to prepare, serve and eat a meal.
- 5A type of antenna with a similar shape to a plate or bowl.
- 6A sexually attractive person.
- 7The state of being concave, like a dish, or the degree of such concavity.
- 8A hollow place, as in a field.
- 9The home plate.
- 10A trough in which ore is measured.
- 11That portion of the produce of a mine which is paid to the land owner or proprietor.
- 12Gossip.
Etymology
From Middle English dissh, disch, from Old English disċ (“plate; bowl; dish”), from Proto-West Germanic *disk (“table; dish”) (whence also Proto-Slavic *dъska, whence Bulgarian дъска́ (dǎská), Polish deska, Russian доска́ (doská)), Russian чан (čan)) from Latin discus. Doublet of dais, desk, disc, discus, disk, and diskos. Cognates Cognate with Scots disch (“dish; plate”), Dutch dis (“table”), German Low German Disk, Disch (“table”), German Tisch (“table”), Danish disk (“dish; counter”), Swedish disk (“dish; counter”), Icelandic diskur (“dish; plate”), Finnish tiski (“desk, counter; dish”). Compare the identical meaning expansion (vessel for food, then also content of such a vessel, then also specific type of food): Bulgarian блю́до (bljúdo), Russian блю́до (bljúdo). For the roundness aspect compare Polish rondel (“pan, saucepan”) (< Latin rotundus (whence also English round)). Also compare typologically Proto-Slavic *misъka << Latin mēnsa; Ancient Greek πίναξ (pínax) (several meanings).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddish,dihs,dishh,dissh,dsih,idsh
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for dish
Misspelling Variants of "dish"
Frequency rank: #5,028 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: