fight
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fight", 5-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 "fight" 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 "fight" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
fight is aEnglishverb. It means: Senses relating to physical conflict: Pronounced /faɪt/. It ranks #585 in English word frequency. Often confused with fit and fish.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fight |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /faɪt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #585 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 17 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fight is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /faɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #585 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for fight, with forms such as "ffight", "fgiht", and "figght". 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 17 confusable-pair relationships, "fit", "fish", "fist", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English fighten (“to fight”), from Old English feohtan (“to fight, combat, strive”), from Proto-West Germanic *fehtan (“to fight”), from Proto-Germanic *fehtaną (“to comb, tease, shear, struggle with”), from Proto-Indo-European *peḱ- (“to comb, … 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 fight, spelled F-I-G-H-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Senses relating to physical conflict:
- 2Senses relating to physical conflict:
- 3Senses relating to physical conflict:
- 4Senses relating to physical conflict:
- 5Senses relating to physical conflict:
- 6To strive for something; to campaign or contend for success.
- 7To try to overpower; to fiercely counteract.
- 8Of colours or other design elements: to clash; to fail to harmonize.
Etymology
From Middle English fighten (“to fight”), from Old English feohtan (“to fight, combat, strive”), from Proto-West Germanic *fehtan (“to fight”), from Proto-Germanic *fehtaną (“to comb, tease, shear, struggle with”), from Proto-Indo-European *peḱ- (“to comb, shear”). Cognate with Scots fecht (“to fight”), West Frisian fjochtsje, fjuchte (“to fight”), Dutch vechten (“to fight”), Low German fechten (“to fight”), German fechten (“to fight, fence”), Danish fægte (“to fence, to fight (using blade weapons)”), Norwegian fekte (“to fence”), Swedish fäkta (“to fence, to fight (using blade weapons), to wave vigorously (and carelessly) with one's arms”), Latin pectō (“comb, thrash”, verb), Albanian pjek (“to hit, strive, fight”), Ancient Greek πέκω (pékō, “comb or card wool”, verb). Related also to Old English feht (“wool, shaggy pelt, fleece”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ffight,fgiht,figght,fighht,fightt,figth,fihgt,ifght
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for fight
Misspelling Variants of "fight"
Frequency rank: #585 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: