interregnum
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "interregnum", 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 "interregnum" 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 "interregnum" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
interregnum is aEnglishnoun. It means: A period of time between the end of one monarch's reign and the accession of their successor. Pronounced /ɪntəˈɹɛɡnəm/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | interregnum |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɪntəˈɹɛɡnəm/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #74,198 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for interregnum is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪntəˈɹɛɡnəm/. Corpus data places it at rank #74,198 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for interregnum in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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: Learned borrowing from Latin interrēgnum, from inter- (prefix meaning ‘between’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁entér (“between”)) + rēgnum (“reign; royal power”) (nominalized from the neuter of *rēgnus, from rēx (“king; ruler”, oblique stem rēg-) … 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 interregnum, spelled I-N-T-E-R-R-E-G-N-U-M, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A period of time between the end of one monarch's reign and the accession of their successor.
- 2A break in continuity; a gap, an intermission.
- 3A period of time between when a minister or pastor leaves a church and when a new one is installed.
- 4A period of time between the end of one political leader's term and the start of the term of their successor; a period of time during which normal executive leadership is interrupted or suspended, and a polity is either left without leadership or has only a temporary one.
- 5A temporary exercise of authority or rule during a period of time when there is no monarch or political leader.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin interrēgnum, from inter- (prefix meaning ‘between’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁entér (“between”)) + rēgnum (“reign; royal power”) (nominalized from the neuter of *rēgnus, from rēx (“king; ruler”, oblique stem rēg-) + -nus (suffix forming adjectives), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to righten; to straighten”)). The plural form interregna is a learned borrowing from Latin interrēgna.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #74,198 in English
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