formula
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "formula", 7-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 "formula" 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 "formula" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
formula is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any mathematical rule expressed symbolically. Pronounced /ˈfɔː.mjʊ.lə/. It ranks #3,301 in English word frequency. Often confused with formulae and formulate.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | formula |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈfɔː.mjʊ.lə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #3,301 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for formula is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈfɔː.mjʊ.lə/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,301 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for formula, with forms such as "fformula", "fomrula", and "formlua". 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 5 confusable-pair relationships, "formulae", "formulate", "formulaic", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Learned borrowing from Latin fōrmula (“a small pattern or mold, form, rule, principle, method, formula”), diminutive of forma (“a form”). See form. 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 formula, spelled F-O-R-M-U-L-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any mathematical rule expressed symbolically.
- 2A symbolic expression of the structure of a compound.
- 3A plan or method for dealing with a problem or for achieving a result.
- 4A formulation; a prescription; a mixture or solution made in a prescribed manner; the identity and quantities of ingredients of such a mixture.
- 5A fixed phrase or set of words intended to be interpreted non-literally, typically used attitudinally or as part of convention; a formulation.
- 6A formal statement of doctrine.
- 7Ellipsis of infant formula, drink given to babies to substitute for mother's milk.
- 8A syntactic expression of a proposition, built up from quantifiers, logical connectives, variables, relation and operation symbols, and, depending on the type of logic, possibly other operators such as modal, temporal, deontic or epistemic ones.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin fōrmula (“a small pattern or mold, form, rule, principle, method, formula”), diminutive of forma (“a form”). See form.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: fformula,fomrula,formlua,formmula,formual,formulla,forrmula,forumla,fromula,ofrmula
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for formula
Misspelling Variants of "formula"
Frequency rank: #3,301 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: