edge
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "edge", 4-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 "edge" 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 "edge" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
edge is aEnglishnoun. It means: The boundary line of a surface. Pronounced /ɛd͡ʒ/. It ranks #1,858 in English word frequency. Often confused with ee and eye.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | edge |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɛd͡ʒ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,858 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for edge is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɛd͡ʒ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,858 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for edge, with forms such as "dege", "eddge", and "edeg". 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, "ee", "eye", "egg", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English egge, from Old English eċġ, from Proto-West Germanic *aggju, from Proto-Germanic *agjō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”). See also Dutch egge, German Ecke, Swedish egg, Norwegian egg; also Welsh hogi (“to sharpen, hone”), Latin … 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 edge, spelled E-D-G-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The boundary line of a surface.
- 2A one-dimensional face of a polytope. In particular, the joining line between two vertices of a polygon; the place where two faces of a polyhedron meet.
- 3An advantage.
- 4The thin cutting side of the blade of an instrument, such as an ax, knife, sword, or scythe; that which cuts as an edge does, or wounds deeply, etc.
- 5A sharp terminating border; a margin; a brink; an extreme verge.
- 6Sharpness; readiness or fitness to cut; keenness; intenseness of desire.
- 7The border or part adjacent to the line of division; the beginning or early part (of a period of time)
- 8A shot where the ball comes off the edge of the bat, often unintentionally.
- 9A connected pair of vertices in a graph.
- 10A level of sexual arousal that is maintained just short of reaching the point of inevitability, or climax.
- 11The point of data production in an organization (the focus of edge computing), as opposed to the cloud.
Etymology
From Middle English egge, from Old English eċġ, from Proto-West Germanic *aggju, from Proto-Germanic *agjō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”). See also Dutch egge, German Ecke, Swedish egg, Norwegian egg; also Welsh hogi (“to sharpen, hone”), Latin aciēs (“sharp”), acus (“needle”), Latvian ašs, ass (“sharp”), Ancient Greek ἀκίς (akís, “needle”), ἀκμή (akmḗ, “point”), and Persian آس (âs, “grinding stone”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: dege,eddge,edeg,edgge,egde
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for edge
Misspelling Variants of "edge"
Frequency rank: #1,858 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index: