heart
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "heart", 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 "heart" 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 "heart" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
heart is aEnglishnoun. It means: A muscular organ that pumps blood through the body, traditionally thought to be the seat of emotion. Pronounced /hɑːt/. It ranks #491 in English word frequency. Often confused with her and het.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | heart |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɑːt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #491 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for heart is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɑːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #491 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for heart, with forms such as "ehart", "haert", and "hearrt". 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, "her", "het", "HRT", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: PIE word *ḱḗr From Middle English herte, from Old English heorte (“heart”), from Proto-West Germanic *hertā, from Proto-Germanic *hertô (“heart”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱérd (“heart”). Doublet of cardia; see also core. Most of the modern figurative sen… 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 heart, spelled H-E-A-R-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A muscular organ that pumps blood through the body, traditionally thought to be the seat of emotion.
- 2One's feelings and emotions, especially considered as part of one's character.
- 3The seat of the affections or sensibilities, collectively or separately, as love, hate, joy, grief, courage, etc.; rarely, the seat of the understanding or will; usually in a good sense; personality.
- 4Emotional strength that allows one to continue in difficult situations; courage; spirit; a will to compete.
- 5Vigorous and efficient activity; power of fertile production; condition of the soil, whether good or bad.
- 6A term of affectionate or kindly and familiar address.
- 7Memory.
- 8A wight or being.
- 9A conventional shape or symbol used to represent the heart, love, or emotion: ♥.
- 10A playing card of the suit hearts featuring one or more heart-shaped symbols.
- 11The twenty-fourth Lenormand card.
- 12The centre, essence, or core.
- 13The centre, essence, or core.
Etymology
PIE word *ḱḗr From Middle English herte, from Old English heorte (“heart”), from Proto-West Germanic *hertā, from Proto-Germanic *hertô (“heart”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱérd (“heart”). Doublet of cardia; see also core. Most of the modern figurative senses (such as passion or compassion, spirit, inmost feelings, especially love, affection, and courage) were present in Old English. However, the meaning “center” dates from the early 14th century. The verb sense “to love” is from the 1977 I ❤ NY advertising campaign. Notes on spelling The spelling ⟨ear⟩ for /ɑː(ɹ)/ is paralleled by hearken and hearth, but is problematics since a Early Modern variant with /ɛːr/ can be posited for those words, but not heart. Perhaps it represents Middle Scots hart /hɛːrt/ (reflecting the Scots lengthening of /a/ before /r/ then a consonant, then the early actuation of the Great Vowel Shift in Scots) or a parallel development in Northern England. Alternatively, a back-spelling by speakers of dialects where preconsonantal /ɛːr/ was shortened early, allowing it to undergo the late Middle English lowering to /ar/ (reflected in forms such as larn "learn") is possible.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ehart,haert,hearrt,heartt,heatr,hheart
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for heart
Misspelling Variants of "heart"
Frequency rank: #491 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: