farm
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 "farm", 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 "farm" 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 "farm" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
farm is aEnglishnoun. It means: A place where agricultural and similar activities take place, especially the growing of crops or the raising of livestock. Pronounced /fɑːm/. It ranks #1,824 in English word frequency. Often confused with FM and for.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | farm |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fɑːm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,824 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for farm is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fɑːm/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,824 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.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for farm, with forms such as "afrm", "famr", and "farmm". 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, "FM", "for", "fat", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English ferme, farme (“rent, revenue, produce, factor, stewardship, meal, feast”), influenced by Anglo-Norman ferme (“rent, lease, farm”), from Medieval Latin ferma, firma. There is debate as to whether Medieval Latin acquired this ter… 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 farm, spelled F-A-R-M, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A place where agricultural and similar activities take place, especially the growing of crops or the raising of livestock.
- 2A tract of land held on lease for the purpose of cultivation.
- 3A location used for an industrial purpose, having many similar structures.
- 4A group of coordinated servers.
- 5Food; provisions; a meal.
- 6A banquet; feast.
- 7A fixed yearly amount (food, provisions, money, etc.) payable as rent or tax.
- 8A fixed yearly sum accepted from a person as a composition for taxes or other moneys which he is empowered to collect; also, a fixed charge imposed on a town, county, etc., in respect of a tax or taxes to be collected within its limits.
- 9The letting-out of public revenue to a ‘farmer’; the privilege of farming a tax or taxes.
- 10The body of farmers of public revenues.
- 11The condition of being let at a fixed rent; lease; a lease.
- 12A baby farm.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English ferme, farme (“rent, revenue, produce, factor, stewardship, meal, feast”), influenced by Anglo-Norman ferme (“rent, lease, farm”), from Medieval Latin ferma, firma. There is debate as to whether Medieval Latin acquired this term from Old English feorm (“rent, provision, supplies, feast”), from Proto-Germanic *fermō, *firhuma- (“means of living, subsistence”), from Proto-Germanic *ferhwō (“life force, body, being”), from Proto-Indo-European *perkʷ- (“life, force, strength, tree”); or from Latin firmus (“solid, secure”), from Proto-Italic *fermos, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer-mo-s (“holding”), from the root *dʰer- (“to hold”). If the former etymology is correct, the term is related to Old English feorh (“life, spirit”), Icelandic fjör (“life, vitality, vigour, animation”), Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌹𐍂𐍈𐌿𐍃 (fairƕus, “the world”). Compare also Old English feormehām (“farm”), feormere (“purveyor, supplier, grocer”). Cognate with Scots ferm (“rent, farm”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: afrm,famr,farmm,farrm,ffarm,fram
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for farm
Misspelling Variants of "farm"
Frequency rank: #1,824 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: