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hospitality

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

11 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "hospitality", 11-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 "hospitality" 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 "hospitality" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

hospitality is aEnglishnoun. It means: The act or service of welcoming, receiving, hosting, or entertaining guests; an appropriate attitude of openness, respect, and generosity toward guests. Pronounced /ˌhɒs.pɪˈtæl.ɪ.ti/. It ranks #8,300 in English word frequency.

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Key facts for hospitality
PropertyValue
Headwordhospitality
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/ˌhɒs.pɪˈtæl.ɪ.ti/
Letters11
Frequency rank#8,300
Misspellings tracked17
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of hospitality in English word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for hospitality is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌhɒs.pɪˈtæl.ɪ.ti/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,300 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 17 documented wrong-spelling variants for hospitality, with forms such as "hhospitality", "hopsitality", and "hosiptality". 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 is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hospitalite, from Old French hospitalité (modern French hospitalité), from Latin hospitālitās (“hospitality”), from hospitālis (“hospitable”), from hospes (“guest", "host”). Displaced native Old English cumlīþnes (literally “guest gentle… 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 hospitality, spelled H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L-I-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    The act or service of welcoming, receiving, hosting, or entertaining guests; an appropriate attitude of openness, respect, and generosity toward guests.
  2. 2
    The business of providing catering, lodging and entertainment service; the industry which includes the operation of hotels, restaurants, and similar enterprises.
  3. 3
    The food, drink, and entertainment given to customers by a company or organization or provided to visitors by a private host.

Etymology

From Middle English hospitalite, from Old French hospitalité (modern French hospitalité), from Latin hospitālitās (“hospitality”), from hospitālis (“hospitable”), from hospes (“guest", "host”). Displaced native Old English cumlīþnes (literally “guest gentleness”).

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: hhospitality,hopsitality,hosiptality,hospiatlity,hospitailty,hospitalitty,hospitalityy,hospitaliyt,hospitallity,hospitaltiy,hospitlaity,hospittality,hosppitality,hosptiality,hosspitality,hsopitality,ohspitality

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for hospitality

Misspelling Variants of "hospitality"

hhospitality12hopsitality11hosiptality11hospiatlity11hospitailty11hospitalitty12hospitalityy12hospitaliyt11
Misspelling Variants of "hospitality"

Frequency rank: #8,300 in English

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "hospitality"?
"hospitality" is spelled H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L-I-T-Y. The IPA pronunciation is /ˌhɒs.pɪˈtæl.ɪ.ti/.
What does "hospitality" mean?
As a noun, "hospitality" means: The act or service of welcoming, receiving, hosting, or entertaining guests; an appropriate attitude of openness, respect, and generosity toward guests.
What are common misspellings of "hospitality"?
Common misspellings include "hhospitality", "hopsitality", "hosiptality", "hospiatlity", "hospitailty". The correct spelling is "hospitality".
How do you pronounce "hospitality"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "hospitality" is /ˌhɒs.pɪˈtæl.ɪ.ti/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "hospitality"?
From Middle English hospitalite, from Old French hospitalité (modern French hospitalité), from Latin hospitālitās (“hospitality”), from hospitālis (“hospitable”), from hospes (“guest", "host”). Displaced native Old English cumlīþnes (literally “gu... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.