fix
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fix", 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 "fix" 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 "fix" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
fix is aEnglishverb. It means: To pierce; now generally replaced by transfix. Pronounced /ˈfɪks/. It ranks #1,826 in English word frequency. Often confused with FL and FM.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fix |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈfɪks/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,826 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fix is 3 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈfɪks/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,826 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for fix 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, "FL", "FM", "fu", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English fixen, borrowed from Old French *fixer (attested only as ficher, fichier; > English fitch), from fix (“fastened; fixed”), from Latin fīxus (“immovable; steady; stable; fixed”), from fīgō (“to drive in; stick; fasten”), from Proto-Indo-Eu… 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 fix, spelled F-I-X, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To pierce; now generally replaced by transfix.
- 2To pierce; now generally replaced by transfix.
- 3To attach; to affix; to hold in place or at a particular time.
- 4To attach; to affix; to hold in place or at a particular time.
- 5To attach; to affix; to hold in place or at a particular time.
- 6To mend, to repair.
- 7To mend, to repair.
- 8To prepare (food or drink).
- 9To make (a contest, vote, or gamble) unfair; to privilege one contestant or a particular group of contestants, usually before the contest begins; to arrange immunity for defendants by tampering with the justice system via bribery or extortion.
- 10To surgically render an animal, especially a pet, infertile.
- 11To map (a point or subset) to itself.
- 12To take revenge on, to best; to serve justice on an assumed miscreant.
- 13To render (a photographic impression) permanent by treating with such applications as will make it insensitive to the action of light.
- 14To convert into a stable or available form.
- 15To become fixed; to settle or remain permanently; to cease from wandering; to rest.
- 16To become firm, so as to resist volatilization; to cease to flow or be fluid; to congeal; to become hard and malleable, as a metallic substance.
- 17To shoot; to inject a drug.
Etymology
From Middle English fixen, borrowed from Old French *fixer (attested only as ficher, fichier; > English fitch), from fix (“fastened; fixed”), from Latin fīxus (“immovable; steady; stable; fixed”), from fīgō (“to drive in; stick; fasten”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“to jab; stick; set”). Related to dig.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #1,826 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: