focus
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "focus", 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 "focus" 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 "focus" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
focus is aEnglishnoun. It means: A point at which reflected or refracted rays of light converge. Pronounced /ˈfəʊ.kəs/. It ranks #1,077 in English word frequency. Often confused with fou and four.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | focus |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈfəʊ.kəs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,077 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for focus is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈfəʊ.kəs/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,077 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for focus, with forms such as "fcous", "ffocus", and "foccus". 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, "fou", "four", "foul", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Latin focus (“hearth, fireplace”); see there for more. Related to fuel. Kepler introduced the term into mathematics and the sciences in describing elliptical orbits of planets (quote from Nicholas Mee) : "One of the interesting properties of a… 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 focus, spelled F-O-C-U-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A point at which reflected or refracted rays of light converge.
- 2A point of a conic at which rays reflected from a curve or surface converge.
- 3The fact of the convergence of light on the photographic medium.
- 4The quality of the convergence of light on the photographic medium.
- 5Concentration of attention.
- 6Something to which activity, attention or interest is primarily directed.
- 7The exact point of where an earthquake occurs, in three dimensions (underneath the epicentre).
- 8The status of being the currently active element in a user interface, often indicated by a visual highlight.
- 9The most important word or phrase in a sentence or passage, or the one that imparts information.
- 10An object used in casting a magic spell.
- 11The centre of an older fish's scale, which is the point where a younger fish's scale starts to grow from.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin focus (“hearth, fireplace”); see there for more. Related to fuel. Kepler introduced the term into mathematics and the sciences in describing elliptical orbits of planets (quote from Nicholas Mee) : "One of the interesting properties of an ellipse is that if there were a light bulb at one focus, then all the light that it emits would reflect off the ellipse and converge at the other focus. This is why Kepler originally used the name focus for these points."
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: fcous,ffocus,foccus,focsu,focuss,foucs,ofcus
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for focus
Misspelling Variants of "focus"
Frequency rank: #1,077 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: