drink
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 "drink", 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 "drink" 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 "drink" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
drink is aEnglishverb. It means: To consume (a liquid) through the mouth. Pronounced /dɹɪŋk/. It ranks #1,334 in English word frequency. Often confused with drip and dunk.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | drink |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /dɹɪŋk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,334 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for drink is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɹɪŋk/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,334 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 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 drink, with forms such as "ddrink", "dirnk", and "drikn". 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, "drip", "dunk", "drive", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English drinken, from Old English drincan (“to drink, swallow up, engulf”), from Proto-West Germanic *drinkan, from Proto-Germanic *drinkaną (“to drink”), of uncertain origin; possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrenǵ- (“to draw into one's mouth… 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 drink, spelled D-R-I-N-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To consume (a liquid) through the mouth.
- 2To consume the liquid contained within (a bottle, glass, etc.).
- 3To consume alcoholic beverages.
- 4To take in (a liquid), in any manner; to suck up; to absorb; to imbibe.
- 5To take in; to receive within one, through the senses; to inhale; to hear; to see.
- 6To toast (someone or something) with a drink, honour; to wish well (see drink to), especially
- 7To toast (someone or something) with a drink, honour; to wish well (see drink to), especially:
- 8To toast (someone or something) with a drink, honour; to wish well (see drink to), especially:
- 9To smoke, as tobacco.
- 10Used in phrasal verbs: drink down, drink in, drink off, drink out, drink to, drink up.
Etymology
From Middle English drinken, from Old English drincan (“to drink, swallow up, engulf”), from Proto-West Germanic *drinkan, from Proto-Germanic *drinkaną (“to drink”), of uncertain origin; possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrenǵ- (“to draw into one's mouth, sip, gulp”), nasalised variant of *dʰreǵ- (“to draw, glide”). Cognates Cognate with Yola drink (“to drink”), North Frisian drank, drainke, drink, drinke (“to drink”), West Frisian drinke (“to drink”), Alemannic German trénge, trenhu, trinche, tringhien, trinke (“to drink”), Bavarian dringa, trinckn, trinkhn, trinkn (“to drink”), Cimbrian trinkan, trinkhan (“to drink”), Dutch, Low German drinken (“to drink”), German, Mòcheno trinken (“to drink”), Luxembourgish drénken (“to drink”), Yiddish טרינקען (trinken, “to drink”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål drikke (“to drink”), Elfdalian drikka (“to drink”), Faroese, Icelandic drekka (“to drink”), Jutish drenk (“to drink”), Norwegian Nynorsk drikka, drikke (“to drink”), Swedish dricka (“to drink”), Gothic 𐌳𐍂𐌹𐌲𐌺𐌰𐌽 (drigkan, “to drink”), Vandalic drincan (“to drink”), French trinquer (“to booze, drink alcohol”), Italian trincare (“to knock back (a drink)”), Spanish trincar (“to get drunk”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddrink,dirnk,drikn,drinkk,drinnk,drnik,drrink,rdink
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for drink
Misspelling Variants of "drink"
Frequency rank: #1,334 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: