doctor
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "doctor", 6-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 "doctor" 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 "doctor" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
doctor is aEnglishnoun. It means: A physician; a member of the medical profession; one who is trained and licensed to heal the sick or injured. The final examination and qualification may award a doctor degree in which case the pos... Pronounced /ˈdɒktə(ɹ)/. It ranks #1,332 in English word frequency. Often confused with door and donor.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | doctor |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈdɒktə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,332 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for doctor is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdɒktə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,332 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for doctor, with forms such as "dcotor", "ddoctor", and "docctor". 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 9 confusable-pair relationships, "door", "donor", "doctors", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English doctor, doctour (“an expert, authority on a subject”), from Anglo-Norman doctour, from Latin doctor (“teacher”), from doceō (“to teach”). Displaced native Middle English lerare (“doctor, teacher”) (from Middle English leren (“to teach, i… 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 doctor, spelled D-O-C-T-O-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A physician; a member of the medical profession; one who is trained and licensed to heal the sick or injured. The final examination and qualification may award a doctor degree in which case the post-nominal letters are DO, DPM, MD, DMD, or DDS in the US, or MBBS or BDS in the UK.
- 2A person who has attained a doctorate, such as a Ph.D. or Th.D. or one of many other terminal degrees conferred by a college or university.
- 3A veterinarian; a medical practitioner who treats non-human animals.
- 4A nickname for a person who has special knowledge or talents to manipulate or arrange transactions.
- 5A teacher; one skilled in a profession or a branch of knowledge; a learned man.
- 6Any mechanical contrivance intended to remedy a difficulty or serve some purpose in an exigency.
- 7A fish, the friar skate.
- 8A witchdoctor.
- 9A ship's cook.
Etymology
From Middle English doctor, doctour (“an expert, authority on a subject”), from Anglo-Norman doctour, from Latin doctor (“teacher”), from doceō (“to teach”). Displaced native Middle English lerare (“doctor, teacher”) (from Middle English leren (“to teach, instruct”) from Old English lǣran, lēran (“to teach, instruct, guide”), compare Old English lārēow (“teacher, master”)). Displaced Old English lǣċe (“doctor, physician”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: dcotor,ddoctor,docctor,docotr,doctorr,doctro,docttor,dotcor,odctor
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for doctor
Misspelling Variants of "doctor"
Frequency rank: #1,332 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: