koan
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "koan", 4-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 "koan" 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 "koan" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
koan is aEnglishnoun. It means: A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable or parable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechani... Pronounced /ˈkəʊ.ɑːn/.
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See how koan compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | koan |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkəʊ.ɑːn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #88,512 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for koan is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkəʊ.ɑːn/. Corpus data places it at rank #88,512 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for koan 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: From Japanese 公案 (kōan), derived from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”). 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 koan, spelled K-O-A-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable or parable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori.
- 2A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment.
- 3A therapy technique used by Traditional Chinese medicinal physicians or medical practitioners to break a presenting patients habitual pattern of thinking that has been diagnosed as the primary cause of an illness or disease.
Etymology
From Japanese 公案 (kōan), derived from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #88,512 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter K in our English index: