image
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 "image", 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 "image" 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 "image" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
image is aEnglishnoun. It means: A visual or other representation of the external form of something in art. Pronounced /ˈɪm.ɪdʒ/. It ranks #1,225 in English word frequency. Often confused with IMG and IME.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | image |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɪm.ɪdʒ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,225 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 16 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for image is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɪm.ɪdʒ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,225 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 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 image, with forms such as "iamge", "imaeg", and "imagge". 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 16 confusable-pair relationships, "IMG", "IME", "imam", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English ymage, borrowed from Old French image, from Latin imāgō (“a copy, likeness, image”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eym-; the same PIE root is the source of imitari (“to copy, imitate”); see imitate. Doublet of imago. 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 image, spelled I-M-A-G-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A visual or other representation of the external form of something in art.
- 2A visual or other representation of the external form of something in art.
- 3A mental picture of something not real or not present.
- 4A statue or idol.
- 5A file that contains all information needed to produce a live working copy. (See disk image and image copy.)
- 6A characteristic of a person, group or company etc., style, manner of dress, how one is or wishes to be perceived by others.
- 7The value a function maps some argument to.
- 8The subset of the codomain of a function comprising those elements that are the image of some element of its domain.
- 9A form of interference: a weaker "copy" of a strong signal that occurs at a different frequency.
- 10Show; appearance; cast.
Etymology
From Middle English ymage, borrowed from Old French image, from Latin imāgō (“a copy, likeness, image”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eym-; the same PIE root is the source of imitari (“to copy, imitate”); see imitate. Doublet of imago.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: iamge,imaeg,imagge,imgae,immage,miage
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for image
Misspelling Variants of "image"
Frequency rank: #1,225 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter I in our English index: