freight
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 "freight", 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 "freight" 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 "freight" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
freight is aEnglishnoun. It means: The transportation of goods (originally by water; now also (chiefly US) by land); also, the hiring of a vehicle or vessel for such transportation. Pronounced /fɹeɪt/. It ranks #7,230 in English word frequency. Often confused with fright and freighter.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | freight |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fɹeɪt/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #7,230 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for freight is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fɹeɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,230 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for freight, with forms such as "feright", "ffreight", and "fregiht". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "fright", "freighter", "fight", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English freight, freght, freyght [and other forms], a variant of fraught, fraght (“transport of goods or people, usually by water; transportation fee; transportation facilities; cargo or passengers of a ship; (figuratively) burden; ballast … 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 freight, spelled F-R-E-I-G-H-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The transportation of goods (originally by water; now also (chiefly US) by land); also, the hiring of a vehicle or vessel for such transportation.
- 2Goods or items in transport; cargo, luggage.
- 3Payment for transportation.
- 4A burden, a load.
- 5Cultural or emotional associations.
- 6Ellipsis of freight train.
Etymology
From Late Middle English freight, freght, freyght [and other forms], a variant of fraught, fraght (“transport of goods or people, usually by water; transportation fee; transportation facilities; cargo or passengers of a ship; (figuratively) burden; ballast of a ship; goods; a charge”), from Middle Dutch vracht, vrecht, and Middle Low German vrecht (“cargo, freight; transportation fee”), from Old Saxon frāht, frēht, from Proto-West Germanic *fra- (from Proto-Germanic *fra- (prefix meaning ‘completely, fully’)) + *aihti (from Proto-Germanic *aihtiz (“possessions, property”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyḱ- (“to come into possession of, obtain; to own, possess”)). The English word can be analysed as for- + aught, and is a doublet of fraught. Cognates * French fret (“cargo, freight; transportation fees; rental of a ship”) * Old English ǣht (“livestock; possession, property; power”) * Old High German frēht (“earnings”) * Portuguese frete (“cargo, freight; transportation fees”) * Spanish flete (“cargo, freight; charter (hire of a vehicle for transporting cargo)”) * Swedish frakt c (“cargo, freight; transportation fees”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: feright,ffreight,fregiht,freigght,freighht,freightt,freigth,freihgt,frieght,frreight,rfeight
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for freight
Misspelling Variants of "freight"
Frequency rank: #7,230 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: