fee
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fee", 3-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 "fee" 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 "fee" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
fee is aEnglishnoun. It means: An amount charged for a privilege. Pronounced /fiː/. It ranks #2,947 in English word frequency. Often confused with fi and FL.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fee |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fiː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #2,947 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fee is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fiː/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,947 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for fee in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fi", "FL", "FM", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English fee, fe, feh, feoh, from Old English feoh (“cattle, property, wealth, money, payment, tribute, fee”) with contamination from Old French fieu, fief (from Medieval Latin fevum, a variant of feudum (see feud), from Frankish *fehu (“cattle, … 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 fee, spelled F-E-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An amount charged for a privilege.
- 2An amount charged for professional services.
- 3An additional monetary payment charged for a service or good, especially one that is minor compared to the underlying cost.
- 4An inheritable estate in land, whether absolute and without limitation to potential heirs (fee simple) or with limitations to particular kinds of heirs (fee tail).
- 5A right to the use of a superior's land as a stipend for certain services to be performed, typically military service.
- 6Synonym of fief: the land so held.
- 7An inheritable estate in land held of a feudal lord on condition of performance of certain services, typically military service.
- 8Synonym of possession.
- 9Money paid or bestowed; payment; emolument.
- 10A prize or reward. Only used in the set phrase "A finder's fee" in Modern English.
Etymology
From Middle English fee, fe, feh, feoh, from Old English feoh (“cattle, property, wealth, money, payment, tribute, fee”) with contamination from Old French fieu, fief (from Medieval Latin fevum, a variant of feudum (see feud), from Frankish *fehu (“cattle, livestock”); whence fief), both from Proto-Germanic *fehu (“cattle, sheep, livestock, owndom”), from Proto-Indo-European *péḱu (“livestock”). Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Fäi (“cattle, livestock”), West Frisian fee (“livestock”), Cimbrian biighe, viighe (“animal, beast”), Dutch vee (“cattle, livestock”), German Viech (“animal, beast”), Vieh (“livestock”), German Low German Veeh (“cattle, livestock, property”), Luxembourgish Véi (“cattle”), Vilamovian fi, fī, fii, fiih (“cattle, livestock”), Yiddish פֿי (fi), פֿיך (fikh, “cattle, livestock”), Danish and Faroese fæ (“cattle, livestock”), Icelandic fé (“assets, livestock, money”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk fe (“cattle, livestock”), Swedish fä (“beast, cattle, dolt”), Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌹𐌷𐍉 (faihō), 𐍆𐌰𐌹𐌷𐌿 (faihu, “possessions, property; riches, wealth; money”); also Latin pecū (“cattle”), Old Prussian pecku (“cattle”), Armenian ասր (asr, “fleece, wool”), Avestan 𐬞𐬀𐬯𐬎 (pasu, “livestock”), Bactrian ποσο (poso, “sheep”), Central Kurdish پەز (pez, “sheep”), Northern Kurdish pez (“sheep”), Ossetian фыс (fys, “sheep”), Talysh pəs, пәс (“sheep”), Sanskrit पशु (paśu, “cattle”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #2,947 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: