dromedary
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "dromedary", 9-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "dromedary" 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 "dromedary" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
dromedary is aEnglishnoun. It means: The single-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius). Pronounced /ˈdɹɒmɪdəɹi/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dromedary |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈdɹɒmɪdəɹi/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #88,293 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dromedary is 9 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdɹɒmɪdəɹi/. Corpus data places it at rank #88,293 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for dromedary in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English dromedari, dromedarie (“dromedary; any camel”) [and other forms], from Old French dromedaire, from Late Latin dromedārius (“kind of camel”), from Latin *dromadārius, from dromas, dromadis (“dromedary”) + -ārius (suffix forming nouns deno… 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 dromedary, spelled D-R-O-M-E-D-A-R-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The single-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius).
- 2Any swift riding camel.
- 3Referring to a biphasic clinical course of poliomyelitis, typically occurring in children, characterized by a minor illness, followed by an asymptomatic period of several days before the onset of a major illness involving the central nervous system.
Etymology
From Middle English dromedari, dromedarie (“dromedary; any camel”) [and other forms], from Old French dromedaire, from Late Latin dromedārius (“kind of camel”), from Latin *dromadārius, from dromas, dromadis (“dromedary”) + -ārius (suffix forming nouns denoting agents of use). Dromas and dromadis are derived from Ancient Greek δρομᾰ́ς (dromắs, “running; dromedary”), an ellipsis of δρομὰς κάμηλος (dromàs kámēlos, “running camel”), from δρόμος (drómos, “race, running; race course, track”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *drem- (“to run”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #88,293 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: