hall
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 "hall", 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 "hall" 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 "hall" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hall is aEnglishnoun. It means: A corridor; a hallway. Pronounced /hɔːl/. It ranks #1,427 in English word frequency. Often confused with has and hat.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hall |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɔːl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,427 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hall is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɔːl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,427 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 3 documented wrong-spelling variants for hall, with forms such as "ahll", "hhall", and "hlal". 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, "has", "hat", "ham", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English halle (“hall”), from Old English heall (“hall, dwelling, house, palace, temple, law-court”), from Proto-West Germanic *hallu (“hall”), from Proto-Germanic *hallō (“hall”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to hide, conceal”). Co… 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 hall, spelled H-A-L-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A corridor; a hallway.
- 2A large meeting room.
- 3A manor house (originally because a magistrate's court was held in the hall of his mansion).
- 4A building providing student accommodation at a university.
- 5The principal room of a secular medieval building.
- 6Cleared passageway through a crowd, as for dancing.
- 7A place for special professional education, or for conferring professional degrees or licences.
- 8A living room.
- 9A college's canteen, which is often but not always coterminous with a traditional hall.
- 10A meal served and eaten at a college's hall.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English halle (“hall”), from Old English heall (“hall, dwelling, house, palace, temple, law-court”), from Proto-West Germanic *hallu (“hall”), from Proto-Germanic *hallō (“hall”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to hide, conceal”). Cognate with Scots hall, haw (“hall”), Dutch hal (“hall”), German Halle (“hall”), Danish hal (“hall, sports centre”), Faroese høll (“hall, palace”), Icelandic höll (“palace”), Norwegian hall (“hall”), Swedish hall (“hall”), Latin cella (“room, cell”), Sanskrit शाला (śā́lā, “house, mansion, hall”). Doublet of cell and cella.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ahll,hhall,hlal
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for hall
Misspelling Variants of "hall"
Frequency rank: #1,427 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: