ford
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ford", 4-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 "ford" 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 "ford" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ford is aEnglishnoun. It means: A location where a stream is shallow and the bottom has good footing, making it possible to cross from one side to the other with no bridge, by walking, riding, or driving through the water; a cros... Pronounced /fɔːd/. It ranks #2,996 in English word frequency. Often confused with fox and fur.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ford |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fɔːd/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,996 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ford is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fɔːd/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,996 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for ford, with forms such as "fford", "fodr", and "fordd". 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, "fox", "fur", "fry", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Indo-European *pértus Proto-Germanic *furduz Proto-West Germanic *furdu Old English ford English ford Inherited from Middle English fōrd, from Old English ford, from Proto-West Germani… 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 ford, spelled F-O-R-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A location where a stream is shallow and the bottom has good footing, making it possible to cross from one side to the other with no bridge, by walking, riding, or driving through the water; a crossing.
- 2A stream; a current.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Indo-European *pértus Proto-Germanic *furduz Proto-West Germanic *furdu Old English ford English ford Inherited from Middle English fōrd, from Old English ford, from Proto-West Germanic *furdu, from Proto-Germanic *furduz, from Proto-Indo-European *pértus (“crossing”). Doublet of firth, fjord, and fjard, all via Old Norse; and port, distantly via Latin. Cognate with Low German Föörd, Dutch voord, German Furt, Norwegian and Danish fjord. See also forth and Persian پل (pol, “bridge”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: fford,fodr,fordd,forrd,frod,ofrd
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for ford
Misspelling Variants of "ford"
Frequency rank: #2,996 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: