great
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "great", 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 "great" 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 "great" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
great is anEnglishadj. It means: Taking much space; large. Pronounced /ˈɡɹeɪt/. It ranks #138 in English word frequency. Often confused with grt and grew.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | great |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈɡɹeɪt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #138 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for great is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɡɹeɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #138 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 13 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 great, with forms such as "gerat", "ggreat", and "graet". 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, "grt", "grew", "grey", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English greet (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, thick, coarse, massive”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“big in size, coarse, coarse grained”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub, gr… 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 great, spelled G-R-E-A-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Taking much space; large.
- 2Taking much space; large.
- 3Taking much space; large.
- 4Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic.
- 5Important, consequential.
- 6Involving more generations than the qualified word implies — as many extra generations as repetitions of the word great (from 1510s).
- 7Pregnant; large with young; full of.
- 8Intimate; familiar.
- 9Arising from or possessing idealism; admirable; commanding; illustrious; eminent.
- 10Impressive or striking.
- 11Much in use; favoured.
- 12Of much talent or achievements.
- 13Doing or exemplifying (a characteristic or pursuit) on a large scale; active or enthusiastic.
Etymology
From Middle English greet (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, thick, coarse, massive”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“big in size, coarse, coarse grained”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub, grind, remove”). Cognates Cognate with Scots graat, great, greet (“great”), Yola graat (“great”), North Frisian grat, groot, grot, grut, gurt (“big, great, large”), Saterland Frisian groot (“big, large”), West Frisian grut (“big, great, large”), Alemannic German groß, gruuss (“very large”), Central Franconian jruß (“big, great, large”), Cimbrian gròas, groaz (“big, great, large”), Dutch and German Low German groot (“big, great, large”), German gross, groß (“big, large”), Luxembourgish grouss (“big, great, large”), Mòcheno groas (“big, great, large”), Vilamovian grus, grūs (“big, great, large”), Yiddish גרויס (groys, “big, large”); also Latin grandis (“big, great, large”). Related to grit. Doublet of gross. The modern pronunciation shows an irregular change of Early Modern English /ɛː/ to /eɪ/ in the standard language; contrast this with the development of other words such as beat and heat.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: gerat,ggreat,graet,greatt,grreat,rgeat
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for great
Misspelling Variants of "great"
Frequency rank: #138 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter G in our English index: