draft
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "draft", 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 "draft" 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 "draft" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
draft is aEnglishnoun. It means: A current of air, usually coming into a room or vehicle. Pronounced /dɹɑːft/. It ranks #2,438 in English word frequency. Often confused with draw and drag.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | draft |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /dɹɑːft/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,438 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for draft is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɹɑːft/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,438 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 24 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for draft, with forms such as "darft", "ddraft", and "drafft". 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, "draw", "drag", "dram", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: A phonetic spelling of draught (compare laughter), from Middle English draught, draght (“that which is pulled; that which is drawn up, a design”), from Old English *dreaht, *dræht, from Proto-West Germanic *drahti, *drahtu, from Proto-Germanic *drahtuz (“a … 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 draft, spelled D-R-A-F-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A current of air, usually coming into a room or vehicle.
- 2The draw through a flue of gasses or smoke resulting from a combustion process.
- 3An act of drinking.
- 4The quantity of liquid (such as water, alcohol, or medicine) drunk in one swallow.
- 5A dose (of medicine, alcohol, etc.).
- 6Liquid, especially beer or other alcohol, drawn from a cask or keg rather than a bottle or can.
- 7The depth of water needed to float a particular ship; the depth from the waterline to the bottom of a vessel's hull; the depth of water drawn by a vessel.
- 8A version of a written work (such as a book or paper) or drawing.
- 9An unsent e-mail.
- 10A preliminary sketch or outline for a plan.
- 11An order for money to be paid; the document that states it: a cheque, note, bond, bill of exchange, money order, or IOU.
- 12Conscription; the system of forcing people to serve in the military.
- 13A person who has been drafted; a conscript or draftee.
- 14A system of forcing or convincing people to take an elected position.
- 15A system of assigning rookie players to professional sports teams.
- 16A style of play in collectible card games, where players select from a shared pool of cards.
- 17A quantity that is requisitioned or drawn out from a larger population.
- 18The pulling force (tension) on couplers and draft gear during a slack (stretched) condition.
- 19The bevel given to the pattern for a casting, so that it can be drawn from the sand without damaging the mould.
- 20The action or an act (especially of a beast of burden or vehicle) of pulling something along or back.
- 21The act of drawing in a net for fish.
- 22That which is drawn in; a catch; a haul.
- 23A small stream or tributary.
- 24A ravine or narrow valley, especially one through which a stream (at least intermittently) flows.
Etymology
A phonetic spelling of draught (compare laughter), from Middle English draught, draght (“that which is pulled; that which is drawn up, a design”), from Old English *dreaht, *dræht, from Proto-West Germanic *drahti, *drahtu, from Proto-Germanic *drahtuz (“a pulling, drawing”). Cognate with Dutch dracht, German Tracht, Icelandic dráttur. By surface analysis, draw + -t.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: darft,ddraft,drafft,draftt,dratf,drfat,drraft,rdaft
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for draft
Misspelling Variants of "draft"
Frequency rank: #2,438 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: