except
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "except", 6-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 "except" 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 "except" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
except is aEnglishverb. It means: To exclude; to specify as being an exception. Pronounced /ɪkˈsɛpt/. It ranks #1,017 in English word frequency. Often confused with exert and expect.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | except |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ɪkˈsɛpt/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,017 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for except is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪkˈsɛpt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,017 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for except, with forms such as "ecxept", "exccept", and "exceppt". 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 9 confusable-pair relationships, "exert", "expect", "expert", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Middle French excepter, from Latin exceptus. 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 except, spelled E-X-C-E-P-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To exclude; to specify as being an exception.
- 2To take exception, to object (to or against).
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French excepter, from Latin exceptus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ecxept,exccept,exceppt,exceptt,excetp,excpet,execpt,exxcept,xecept
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for except
Misspelling Variants of "except"
Frequency rank: #1,017 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index: