ear
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ear", 3-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 "ear" 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 "ear" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ear is aEnglishnoun. It means: The organ of hearing, consisting of the pinna or auricle, auditory canal, eardrum, malleus, incus, stapes and cochlea. Pronounced /ˈɪə̯/. It ranks #3,425 in English word frequency. Often confused with ex and ed.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ear |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɪə̯/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #3,425 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ear is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɪə̯/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,425 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ear in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ex", "ed", "et", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₂ṓws Proto-Germanic *ausô Proto-West Germanic *auʀā Old English ēare Middle English ere English ear From Middle English ere, eare, from Old English ēare (“ear”), from Pr… 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 ear, spelled E-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The organ of hearing, consisting of the pinna or auricle, auditory canal, eardrum, malleus, incus, stapes and cochlea.
- 2The external part of the organ of hearing, the auricle.
- 3A police informant.
- 4The sense of hearing; the perception of sounds; skill or good taste in listening to music.
- 5The privilege of being kindly heard; favour; attention.
- 6That which resembles in shape or position the ear of an animal; a prominence or projection on an object, usually for support or attachment; a lug; a handle; a foot-rest or step of a spade or a similar digging tool.
- 7An acroterium.
- 8A crossette.
- 9A space to the left or right of a publication's front-page title, used for advertising, weather, etc.
- 10A curled ridge in the crust of a loaf of bread where the dough was slashed before going into the oven and expands during baking.
- 11The outer panels or flaps (protrusions) of a diaper upon which the fasteners are located, which are fastened around the wearer's waist.
- 12A path whose endpoints may coincide but in which otherwise there are no repetitions of vertices or edges.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₂ṓws Proto-Germanic *ausô Proto-West Germanic *auʀā Old English ēare Middle English ere English ear From Middle English ere, eare, from Old English ēare (“ear”), from Proto-West Germanic *auʀā, from the voiced Verner alternant of Proto-Germanic *ausô (“ear”) (compare Scots ere, er, eir, West Frisian ear, Dutch oor, German Ohr, Swedish öra, Danish øre), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ṓws (compare Old Irish áu, Latin auris, Lithuanian ausi̇̀s, Russian у́хо (úxo), Albanian vesh, Ancient Greek οὖς (oûs), and Old Armenian ունկն (unkn).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #3,425 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index: