hail
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "hail", 4-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 "hail" 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 "hail" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hail is aEnglishnoun. It means: Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm. Pronounced /heɪl/. It ranks #8,042 in English word frequency. Often confused with hi and his.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hail |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /heɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #8,042 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hail is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /heɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,042 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 3 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 hail, with forms such as "ahil", "haill", and "hali". 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, "hi", "his", "has", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hayle, haile, hail, hawel, haghil, haȝel, from Old English hæġl, hæġel, hagol (“hail”), from Proto-West Germanic *hagl, from Proto-Germanic *haglaz, of uncertain origin. Either from Proto-Indo-European *kagʰlos (“pebble”); or alternative… 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 hail, spelled H-A-I-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.
- 2An occurrence of this type of precipitation; a hailstorm.
- 3A rapid, intense barrage by a large number of projectiles or other objects.
Etymology
From Middle English hayle, haile, hail, hawel, haghil, haȝel, from Old English hæġl, hæġel, hagol (“hail”), from Proto-West Germanic *hagl, from Proto-Germanic *haglaz, of uncertain origin. Either from Proto-Indo-European *kagʰlos (“pebble”); or alternatively from *ḱoḱló-, a reduplication of *ḱel- (“cold”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Hail (“hail”), West Frisian heil (“hail”), Dutch hagel (“hail”), Low German Hagel (“hail”), German Hagel (“hail”), Danish hagl (“hail”), Swedish hagel (“hail”), Icelandic hagl (“hail”). Compare also Old Norse héla (“frost”). Doublet of haglaz, if the second etymology (“cold”) is correct. Root-cognates outside of Germanic include Ancient Greek κάχληξ (kákhlēx, “pebble”), or alternatively Sanskrit शिशिर (śíśira, “cool, cold”), possibly also Lithuanian šešėlis (“shade, shadow”), depending on the etymology.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ahil,haill,hali,hhail,hial
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for hail
Misspelling Variants of "hail"
Frequency rank: #8,042 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: