fun
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fun", 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 "fun" 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 "fun" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
fun is aEnglishnoun. It means: Amusement, enjoyment or pleasure. Pronounced /fʌn/. It ranks #502 in English word frequency. Often confused with FW and fy.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fun |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fʌn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #502 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fun is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fʌn/. Corpus data places it at rank #502 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for fun 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, "FW", "fy", "fur", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English fonne, fon (“foolish, simple, silly”) or fonnen (“make a fool of”), from Middle English fonne (“a fool, dupe”), probably of North Germanic origin, related to Swedish fånig (“foolish”), Swedish fåne (“a fool”), from Old Norse fáni (“vain … 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 fun, spelled F-U-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Amusement, enjoyment or pleasure.
- 2Playful, often noisy, activity.
Etymology
From Middle English fonne, fon (“foolish, simple, silly”) or fonnen (“make a fool of”), from Middle English fonne (“a fool, dupe”), probably of North Germanic origin, related to Swedish fånig (“foolish”), Swedish fåne (“a fool”), from Old Norse fáni (“vain person, swaggerer”), but of unknown ultimate origin. Perhaps related to or influenced by fjäll (“rock, cliff, mountain”). Compare also English fumble, Norwegian Nynorsk fomme (“clumsy fool”). Compare also Norwegian fomme, fume (“a fool”). More at fon, fond. As a noun, fun is recorded from 1700, with a meaning “a cheat, trick, hoax”, from a verb fun meaning “to cheat, trick” (1680s). The meaning “diversion, amusement” dates to the 1720s. The older meaning is preserved in the phrase to make fun of (1737) and in usage of the adjective funny. The use of fun as adjective is newest and is due to reanalysis of the noun; this was incipient in the mid-19th century. Alternative etymology connected Middle English fonne with Old Frisian fonna, fone, fomne, variant forms of fāmne, fēmne (“young woman, virgin”), from Proto-West Germanic *faimnijā, from Proto-Germanic *faimnijǭ (“maiden”), from Proto-Indo-European *peymen- (“girl”), *poymen- (“breast milk”). If so, then cognate with Old English fǣmne (“maid, virgin, damsel, bride”), West Frisian famke (“girl”), Saterland Frisian fone, fon (“woman, maid, servant," also "weakling, simpleton”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #502 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: