dominant
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "dominant", 8-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 "dominant" 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 "dominant" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
dominant is aEnglishnoun. It means: The fifth major tone of a musical scale (five major steps above the note in question); thus G is the dominant of C, A of D, and so on. Pronounced /ˈdɒmɪnənt/. It ranks #4,851 in English word frequency. Often confused with dominate and dominance.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dominant |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈdɒmɪnənt/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #4,851 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dominant is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdɒmɪnənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,851 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for dominant, with forms such as "ddominant", "dmoinant", and "doimnant". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "dominate", "dominance", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle French dominant. 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 dominant, spelled D-O-M-I-N-A-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The fifth major tone of a musical scale (five major steps above the note in question); thus G is the dominant of C, A of D, and so on.
- 2The triad built on the dominant tone.
- 3Of an allele, that a heterozygote for the allele has the same phenotype as the homozygote.
- 4A species or organism that is dominant.
- 5The dominating partner in sadomasochistic sexual activity.
Etymology
From Middle French dominant.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddominant,dmoinant,doimnant,domiannt,dominannt,dominantt,dominatn,dominnant,dominnat,domminant,domniant,odminant
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for dominant
Misspelling Variants of "dominant"
Frequency rank: #4,851 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: