horse
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "horse", 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 "horse" 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 "horse" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
horse is aEnglishnoun. It means: A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work. Pronounced /hɔːs/. It ranks #1,793 in English word frequency. Often confused with hos and hse.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | horse |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɔːs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,793 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for horse is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɔːs/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,793 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 21 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for horse, with forms such as "hhorse", "hores", and "horrse". 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, "hos", "hse", "host", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hors, horse, ors, from Old English hors (“horse”), from Proto-West Germanic *hors, *hross, from Proto-Germanic *hrussą (“horse”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥sós (“vehicle”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱers- (“to run”). Doublet of car an… 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 horse, spelled H-O-R-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 2A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 3A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 4A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 5A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 6A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 7A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 8A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.
- 9Equipment with legs.
- 10Equipment with legs.
- 11A type of equipment.
- 12A type of equipment.
- 13A type of equipment.
- 14A type of equipment.
- 15A mass of earthy matter, or rock of the same character as the wall rock, occurring in the course of a vein, as of coal or ore; hence, to take horse (said of a vein) is to divide into branches for a distance.
- 16An informal variant of basketball in which players match shots made by their opponent(s), each miss adding a letter to the word "horse", with 5 misses spelling the whole word and eliminating a player, until only the winner is left. Also HORSE, H-O-R-S-E or H.O.R.S.E. (see H-O-R-S-E on WikipediaWikipedia).
- 17The flesh of a horse as an item of cuisine.
- 18A prison guard who smuggles contraband in or out for prisoners.
- 19A translation or other illegitimate aid in study or examination.
- 20Horseplay; tomfoolery.
- 21A player who has been staked, i.e. another player has paid for their buy-in and claims a percentage of any winnings.
Etymology
From Middle English hors, horse, ors, from Old English hors (“horse”), from Proto-West Germanic *hors, *hross, from Proto-Germanic *hrussą (“horse”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥sós (“vehicle”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱers- (“to run”). Doublet of car and carrus. Cognates Cognate with Scots horse (“horse”), West Frisian hoars (“horse”), Cimbrian ross (“horse”), Dutch hors, ros (“horse”), German Ross, Roß (“horse”), Danish and Norwegian Nynorsk hors (“horse, mare”), Faroese hors, ross (“horse”), Icelandic hross (“horse”), Swedish russ (“horse”); also Cornish karr (“car”), Welsh car (“car; cart, wagon”), Latin currus (“car, chariot; wagon, wain”), Ancient Greek ἐπίκουρος (epíkouros, “aiding, assisting; defending; ally, helper; hireling”), Tocharian A kursär (“vehicle; mile”), Tocharian B kwarsär (“course; path”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhorse,hores,horrse,horsse,hosre,hrose,ohrse
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for horse
Misspelling Variants of "horse"
Frequency rank: #1,793 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: