doubt
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "doubt", 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 "doubt" 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 "doubt" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
doubt is aEnglishverb. It means: To be undecided about; to lack confidence in; to disbelieve, to question. Pronounced /daʊt/. It ranks #1,333 in English word frequency. Often confused with dub and dust.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | doubt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /daʊt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,333 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for doubt is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /daʊt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,333 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 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for doubt, with forms such as "ddoubt", "dobut", and "doubbt". 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, "dub", "dust", "Doug", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Latin dubō Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin -tō Latin -itō Latin dubitō Old French doterbor. Middle English douten ▲ Old French doter … 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 doubt, spelled D-O-U-B-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To be undecided about; to lack confidence in; to disbelieve, to question.
- 2To harbour suspicion about; suspect.
- 3To anticipate with dread or fear; to apprehend.
- 4To fill with fear; to affright.
- 5To dread, to fear.
Etymology
Etymology tree Latin dubō Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin -tō Latin -itō Latin dubitō Old French doterbor. Middle English douten ▲ Old French doter Old French doutebor. Middle English doute ▲ English dubiousinflu. ▲ Latin dubitōinflu. English doubt The verb is derived from Middle English douten (“to doubt, fear, worry”) [and other forms], from Old French douter, doter, duter (compare Middle French doubter), from Latin dubitāre (“to be uncertain, doubt; to hesitate, waver in coming to an opinion; to consider, ponder”); the further etymology is uncertain, but one theory is that dubitō may be derived from dubius (“fluctuating, wavering; doubtful, dubious, uncertain”), from duhibius (“held as two”), from duo (“two”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ (“two”)) + habeō (“to have, hold”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ- (“to grab, take”)). Spelling reformers of the early modern period added the letter b to reflect the Latin root dubitō, but it has never been pronounced in English. The noun is derived from Middle English dout, doute (“uncertainty, hesitation; questionable point; anxiety, fear, reverence”) [and other forms], from Old French doute, dote, dute (“uncertain feeling, doubt”), from doter, douter, duter (“to doubt, fear”) (compare Middle French doubter; modern French douter (“to doubt, suspect”)); see further etymology above. Displaced Old English twēo (“doubt”) and twēoġan (“to doubt”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddoubt,dobut,doubbt,doubtt,doutb,duobt,odubt
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for doubt
Misspelling Variants of "doubt"
Frequency rank: #1,333 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: