feather
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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7 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "feather", 7-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 "feather" 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 "feather" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
feather is aEnglishnoun. It means: A branching, hair-like structure that grows on the bodies of birds, used for flight, swimming, protection and display. Pronounced /ˈfɛð.ə(ɹ)/. Often confused with fester and further.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | feather |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈfɛð.ə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #11,379 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 8 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for feather is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈfɛð.ə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #11,379 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for feather, with forms such as "efather", "faether", and "feahter". 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 8 confusable-pair relationships, "fester", "further", "flatter", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English feþer, from Old English feþer, from Proto-West Germanic *feþru, from Proto-Germanic *feþrō, from Proto-Indo-European *péth₂r̥ (“feather, wing”), from *peth₂- (“to fly”). Cognate with West Frisian fear (“feather”), Cimbrian bèdara, fòdara… 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 feather, spelled F-E-A-T-H-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A branching, hair-like structure that grows on the bodies of birds, used for flight, swimming, protection and display.
- 2Long hair on the lower legs of a dog or horse, especially a draft horse, notably the Clydesdale breed. Narrowly only the rear hair.
- 3One of the fins or wings on the shaft of an arrow.
- 4A longitudinal strip projecting from an object to strengthen it, or to enter a channel in another object and thereby prevent displacement sideways or rotationally but permit motion lengthwise.
- 5Kind; nature; species (from the proverbial phrase "birds of a feather").
- 6One of the two shims of the three-piece stone-splitting tool known as plug and feather or plug and feathers; the feathers are placed in a borehole and then a wedge is driven between them, causing the stone to split.
- 7The angular adjustment of an oar or paddle-wheel float, with reference to a horizontal axis, as it leaves or enters the water.
- 8Anything petty or trifling; a whit or jot.
- 9Partridges and pheasants, as opposed to rabbits and hares (called fur).
- 10A junction indicator attached to a colour-light signal at an angle, which lights up, typically with four white lights in a row, when a diverging route is set up.
- 11A faint edge.
Etymology
From Middle English feþer, from Old English feþer, from Proto-West Germanic *feþru, from Proto-Germanic *feþrō, from Proto-Indo-European *péth₂r̥ (“feather, wing”), from *peth₂- (“to fly”). Cognate with West Frisian fear (“feather”), Cimbrian bèdara, fòdara (“pillowcase”), vèdara (“feather”), Dutch veder, veer (“feather”), German Feder (“feather”), German Low German Fedder (“feather”), Luxembourgish Fieder (“feather”), Vilamovian faoder (“feather”), Yiddish פֿעדער (feder, “feather”), Danish fjeder, fjer (“feather”), Faroese fjøður (“feather”), Icelandic fjöður (“feather”), Norwegian Bokmål fjær, fjør (“feather”), Norwegian Nynorsk fjøder, fjør (“feather”), Swedish fjäder (“feather”). Also Ancient Greek πέτομαι (pétomai, “to fly”), Albanian shpend (“bird”), Latin penna (“feather”), Old Armenian թիռ (tʻiṙ, “flight”). The sense correlated with splines and keys (noun sense 4) probably reflects analogy with the fletching sense (noun sense 3).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: efather,faether,feahter,featehr,featherr,feathher,feathre,featther,fetaher,ffeather
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for feather
Misspelling Variants of "feather"
Frequency rank: #11,379 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: