haul
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 "haul", 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 "haul" 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 "haul" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
haul is aEnglishverb. It means: To transport by drawing or pulling, as with horses or oxen, or a motor vehicle. Pronounced /hɔːl/. It ranks #8,551 in English word frequency. Often confused with Hu and huh.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | haul |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /hɔːl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #8,551 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for haul is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɔːl/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,551 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 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 haul, with forms such as "ahul", "halu", and "haull". 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, "Hu", "huh", "hug", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hālen, hailen, haulen, halien (“to drag, pull; to draw up”), from Old French haler (“to haul, pull”), from Frankish *halōn (“to drag, fetch, haul”) or Middle Dutch halen (“to drag, fetch, haul”), possibly merging with Old English *halian… 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 haul, spelled H-A-U-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To transport by drawing or pulling, as with horses or oxen, or a motor vehicle.
- 2To draw or pull something heavy.
- 3To carry or transport something, with a connotation that the item is heavy or otherwise difficult to move.
- 4To drag, to pull, to tug.
- 5Followed by up: to summon to be disciplined or held answerable for something.
- 6To pull apart, as oxen sometimes do when yoked.
- 7To steer (a vessel) closer to the wind.
- 8Of the wind: to shift fore (more towards the bow).
- 9To haul ass (“go fast”).
Etymology
From Middle English hālen, hailen, haulen, halien (“to drag, pull; to draw up”), from Old French haler (“to haul, pull”), from Frankish *halōn (“to drag, fetch, haul”) or Middle Dutch halen (“to drag, fetch, haul”), possibly merging with Old English *halian (“to haul, drag”); all from Proto-Germanic *halōną, *halēną, *hulōną (“to call, fetch, summon”), from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₁- (“to call, cry, summon”). The noun is derived from the verb. Cognates The word is cognate with Danish hale (“to haul”), Middle Dutch halen (“to draw, fetch, haul”), Dutch halen (“to fetch, bring, haul”), Old Frisian halia, Saterland Frisian halen (“to draw, haul, pull”), Low German halen (“to draw, pull”), Old High German halôn, holôn, German holen (“to fetch, get”), Norwegian hale (“to haul”), Old Saxon halôn (“to fetch, get”), Swedish hala (“to hale, haul, pull, tug”), and related to Old English ġeholian (“to get, obtain”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ahul,halu,haull,hhaul,hual
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for haul
Misspelling Variants of "haul"
Frequency rank: #8,551 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: