impeachment
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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11 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "impeachment", 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 "impeachment" 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 "impeachment" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
impeachment is aEnglishnoun. It means: The act of calling into question or challenging the accuracy or propriety of something. Pronounced /ɪmˈpiːt͡ʃ.mənt/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | impeachment |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɪmˈpiːt͡ʃ.mənt/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #13,174 |
| Misspellings tracked | 17 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for impeachment is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪmˈpiːt͡ʃ.mənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,174 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 6 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 impeachment, with forms such as "imepachment", "immpeachment", and "impaechment". 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 empechement (“hindrance, impediment, obstacle, obstruction; legal accusation or charge; act of calling into question or discrediting; challenge to a claim or right”), and thence either: * from Middle English empechen, empeschen, empesche… 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 impeachment, spelled I-M-P-E-A-C-H-M-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The act of calling into question or challenging the accuracy or propriety of something.
- 2The act of calling into question or challenging the accuracy or propriety of something.
- 3The act of calling into question or challenging the accuracy or propriety of something.
- 4The act of calling into question or challenging the accuracy or propriety of something.
- 5The state of being impeached.
- 6Hindrance; impediment; obstruction.
Etymology
From Middle English empechement (“hindrance, impediment, obstacle, obstruction; legal accusation or charge; act of calling into question or discrediting; challenge to a claim or right”), and thence either: * from Middle English empechen, empeschen, empesche, enpechen, impechen (“to cause to get stuck; of a ship: to run aground; to block, obstruct; to hinder, impede; to prevent; to interfere with, harm; to criticize, disparage; to bring charges against; to formally accuse of treason or another high crime”) (from Anglo-Norman empecher, Old French empechier, empeechier) + -ment (suffix forming action nouns, concrete nouns, and nouns indicating a result or a condition or state); or * from Old French empechement, empeechement, empeschement (“obstacle”) (modern French empêchement (“impediment, obstacle”)), from empeechier (“to fetter; to hinder”), empescher (“to inhibit, prevent”) + -ment (suffix forming nouns from verbs). The English word is analysable as impeach + -ment. Old French empechier, empeechier and empescher (compare modern French empêcher) are derived from Late Latin impedicāre (“to catch; to entangle”), present active infinitive of Latin impedicō (“to entangle; to fetter”), from im- (variant of in-) + pedica (“fetter, shackle; snare, trap”) (from pēs (“foot”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ped- (“to step, walk; to fall, stumble”)) + -ō. In senses 1.2 (“accusation that a person has committed a crime”) and 1.3 (“act of impeaching or charging a public official with misconduct”), the word has been used in place of Latin impetere, the present active infinitive of impetō (“to assail, attack, rush upon”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: imepachment,immpeachment,impaechment,impeacchment,impeachemnt,impeachhment,impeachmennt,impeachmentt,impeachmetn,impeachmment,impeachmnet,impeacmhent,impeahcment,impecahment,imppeachment,ipmeachment,mipeachment
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for impeachment
Misspelling Variants of "impeachment"
Frequency rank: #13,174 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter I in our English index: