identity
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "identity", 8-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 "identity" 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 "identity" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
identity is aEnglishnoun. It means: Sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same. Pronounced /aɪˈdɛntɪti/. It ranks #2,255 in English word frequency. Often confused with identify.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | identity |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /aɪˈdɛntɪti/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #2,255 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for identity is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /aɪˈdɛntɪti/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,255 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for identity, with forms such as "dientity", "iddentity", and "idenitty". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "identify", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle French identité, from Latin identitās. 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 identity, spelled I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same.
- 2The difference or character that marks off an individual or collective from the rest of the same kind; selfhood; the sense of who something or someone or oneself is, or the recurring characteristics that enable the recognition of such an individual or group by others or themselves.
- 3A name or persona—a mask or appearance one presents to the world—by which one is known.
- 4An equation which always holds true regardless of the choice of input variables.
- 5Any function which maps all elements of its domain to themselves.
- 6An element of an algebraic structure which, when applied to another element under an operation in that structure, yields this second element.
- 7A well-known or famous person.
Etymology
From Middle French identité, from Latin identitās.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: dientity,iddentity,idenitty,idenntity,identitty,identityy,identiyt,identtity,identtiy,idetnity,idnetity,iedntity
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for identity
Misspelling Variants of "identity"
Frequency rank: #2,255 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter I in our English index: