guess
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "guess", 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 "guess" 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 "guess" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
guess is aEnglishverb. It means: To reach a partly (or totally) unconfirmed conclusion; to engage in conjecture; to speculate. Pronounced /ɡɛs/. It ranks #694 in English word frequency. Often confused with Gus and guys.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | guess |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ɡɛs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #694 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for guess is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡɛs/. Corpus data places it at rank #694 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for guess, with forms such as "geuss", "gguess", and "gues". 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, "Gus", "guys", "guns", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English gessen (verb) and Middle English gesse (noun), probably of North Germanic origin, from Old Danish getse, gitse, getsa (“to guess”), from Old Norse *getsa, *gitsa, from Proto-Germanic *gitisōną (“to guess”), from Proto-Germanic *getaną (“… 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 guess, spelled G-U-E-S-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To reach a partly (or totally) unconfirmed conclusion; to engage in conjecture; to speculate.
- 2To solve by a correct conjecture; to conjecture rightly.
- 3To suppose, to imagine (introducing a proposition of uncertain plausibility).
- 4To think, conclude, or decide (without a connotation of uncertainty). Usually in first person: "I guess".
- 5To hit upon or reproduce by memory.
Etymology
From Middle English gessen (verb) and Middle English gesse (noun), probably of North Germanic origin, from Old Danish getse, gitse, getsa (“to guess”), from Old Norse *getsa, *gitsa, from Proto-Germanic *gitisōną (“to guess”), from Proto-Germanic *getaną (“to get”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰed- (“to take, seize”). Cognate with Danish gisne (“to guess”), Norwegian gissa, gjette (“to guess”), Swedish gissa (“to guess”), Saterland Frisian gisje (“to guess”), Dutch gissen (“to guess”), Low German gissen (“to guess”), Dutch gis (“a guess”). Related also to Icelandic giska ("to guess"; from Proto-Germanic *gitiskōną). Compare also Russian гада́ть (gadátʹ, “to conjecture, guess, divine”), Albanian gjëzë (“riddle”) from gjej (“find, recover, obtain”). More at get.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: geuss,gguess,gues,guses,ugess
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for guess
Misspelling Variants of "guess"
Frequency rank: #694 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter G in our English index: