embarrassment
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
13 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "embarrassment", 13-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 "embarrassment" 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 "embarrassment" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
embarrassment is aEnglishnoun. It means: A state of discomfort arising from bashfulness or consciousness of having violated a social rule; humiliation. Pronounced /ɪmˈbæɹ.əs.mənt/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | embarrassment |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɪmˈbæɹ.əs.mənt/ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Frequency rank | #10,041 |
| Misspellings tracked | 17 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for embarrassment is 13 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪmˈbæɹ.əs.mənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,041 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 17 documented wrong-spelling variants for embarrassment, with forms such as "ebmarrassment", "emabrrassment", and "embararssment". 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 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 embarrass + -ment. 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 embarrassment, spelled E-M-B-A-R-R-A-S-S-M-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A state of discomfort arising from bashfulness or consciousness of having violated a social rule; humiliation.
- 2A person or thing which is the cause of humiliation to another.
- 3A large collection of good or valuable things, especially one that exceeds requirements or causes some sort of hindrance.
- 4A state of confusion; hesitation; uncertainty.
- 5Impairment of function due to disease: respiratory embarrassment.
- 6Difficulty in financial matters; poverty.
- 7A group of pandas (ie. red panda, giant panda)
Etymology
From embarrass + -ment.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ebmarrassment,emabrrassment,embararssment,embarassment,embarrasment,embarrasmsent,embarrassemnt,embarrassmennt,embarrassmentt,embarrassmetn,embarrassmment,embarrassmnet,embarrsasment,embbarrassment,embrarassment,emmbarrassment,mebarrassment
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for embarrassment
Misspelling Variants of "embarrassment"
Frequency rank: #10,041 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index: