interpretation
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
14 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "interpretation", 14-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 "interpretation" 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 "interpretation" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
interpretation is aEnglishnoun. It means: An act of interpreting or explaining something unclear; a translation; a version. Pronounced /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/. It ranks #4,957 in English word frequency.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | interpretation |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/ |
| Letters | 14 |
| Frequency rank | #4,957 |
| Misspellings tracked | 22 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for interpretation is 14 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,957 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 22 documented wrong-spelling variants for interpretation, with forms such as "inetrpretation", "innterpretation", and "inteprretation". 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 interpretacioun, from the Anglo-Norman form of Old French interpretacion, from Latin interpretātiō, noun of action from interpretor (“to explain, expound, interpret, understand, conclude, infer, comprehend”). Morphologically interpret + … 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 interpretation, spelled I-N-T-E-R-P-R-E-T-A-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An act of interpreting or explaining something unclear; a translation; a version.
- 2A sense given by an interpreter; an exposition or explanation given; meaning.
- 3The discipline or study of translating one spoken or signed language into another (as opposed to translation, which concerns itself with written language).
- 4The power of explaining.
- 5An artist's way of expressing thought or embodying a conception of nature through art.
- 6An act or process of applying general principles or formulae to the explanation of the results obtained in special cases.
- 7An approximation that allows aspects of a mathematical theory to be discussed in ordinary language.
- 8An assignment of a truth value to each propositional symbol of a propositional calculus.
- 9Short for heritage interpretation
Etymology
From Middle English interpretacioun, from the Anglo-Norman form of Old French interpretacion, from Latin interpretātiō, noun of action from interpretor (“to explain, expound, interpret, understand, conclude, infer, comprehend”). Morphologically interpret + -ation.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: inetrpretation,innterpretation,inteprretation,interpertation,interppretation,interpreattion,interpretaiton,interpretasion,interpretatino,interpretationn,interpretatoin,interpretattion,interprettaion,interprettation,interprretation,interprteation,interrpetation,interrpretation,intrepretation,intterpretation,itnerpretation,niterpretation
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for interpretation
Misspelling Variants of "interpretation"
Frequency rank: #4,957 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter I in our English index: