hair
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "hair", 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 "hair" 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 "hair" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hair is aEnglishnoun. It means: A pigmented filament of keratin which grows from a follicle on the skin of humans and other mammals. Pronounced /hɛə/. It ranks #876 in English word frequency. Often confused with hi and HR.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hair |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɛə/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #876 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hair is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #876 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for hair, with forms such as "ahir", "hairr", and "hhair". 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", "HR", "his", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English her, heer, hær, from Old English hǣr, from Proto-West Germanic *hār, from Proto-Germanic *hērą (“hair”), from Proto-Indo-European *kes- (“to scrape, comb”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Hier, Híer (“hair”), West Frisian hier (“hair”), … 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 hair, spelled H-A-I-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A pigmented filament of keratin which grows from a follicle on the skin of humans and other mammals.
- 2The collection or mass of such growths growing from the skin of humans and animals, and forming a covering for any part or the whole body.
- 3Specifically, the collection of hairs on the top and sides of the human head, growing from the scalp.
- 4A slender outgrowth from the chitinous cuticle of insects, spiders, crustaceans, and other invertebrates. Such hairs are totally unlike those of vertebrates in structure, composition, and mode of growth.
- 5A cellular outgrowth of the epidermis, consisting of one or of several cells, whether pointed, hooked, knobbed, or stellated.
- 6Any slender, flexible outgrowth, filament, or fiber growing or projecting from the surface of an object or organism.
- 7A locking spring or other safety device in the lock of a rifle, etc., capable of being released by a slight pressure on a hair-trigger.
- 8Any very small distance, or degree; a hairbreadth.
- 9Complexity; difficulty; the quality of being hairy.
Etymology
From Middle English her, heer, hær, from Old English hǣr, from Proto-West Germanic *hār, from Proto-Germanic *hērą (“hair”), from Proto-Indo-European *kes- (“to scrape, comb”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Hier, Híer (“hair”), West Frisian hier (“hair”), Cimbrian haar, har (“hair”), Dutch haar (“hair”), German and Low German Haar (“hair”), Luxembourgish Hoer (“hair”), Mòcheno hor (“hair”), Yiddish האָר (hor, “hair”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish hår (“hair”), Faroese and Icelandic hár (“hair”). Eclipsed non-native Middle English cheveler, chevelere (“hair”), borrowed from Old French chevelëure (“hair, head-hair, coiffure, wig”). The modern spelling with ai is not a regular representation of the vowel developed from Middle English. Rather, it is from Middle English here (haircloth) influenced by Old French haire.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ahir,hairr,hhair,hiar
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for hair
Misspelling Variants of "hair"
Frequency rank: #876 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: