language
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "language", 8-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 "language" 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 "language" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
language is aEnglishnoun. It means: A body of words, and set of methods of combining them (called a grammar), understood by a community and used as a form of communication. Pronounced /ˈlæŋɡwɪd͡ʒ/. It ranks #831 in English word frequency. Often confused with languages.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | language |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈlæŋɡwɪd͡ʒ/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #831 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for language is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈlæŋɡwɪd͡ʒ/. Corpus data places it at rank #831 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for language, with forms such as "alnguage", "lagnuage", and "langauge". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "languages", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English langage, language, from Old French language, from Vulgar Latin *linguāticum, from Latin lingua (“tongue, speech, language”), from Old Latin dingua (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue, speech, language”). Doublet of … 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 language, spelled L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A body of words, and set of methods of combining them (called a grammar), understood by a community and used as a form of communication.
- 2The ability to communicate using words.
- 3A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field.
- 4The specific wording or style of a text, such as a law or a contract.
- 5The expression of thought (the communication of meaning) in a specified way; that which communicates something, as language does.
- 6A body of sounds, signs or signals by which animals communicate, and by which plants are sometimes also thought to communicate.
- 7A computer language; a machine language.
- 8A manner of expression.
- 9The particular words used in a speech or a passage of text.
- 10Profanity.
Etymology
From Middle English langage, language, from Old French language, from Vulgar Latin *linguāticum, from Latin lingua (“tongue, speech, language”), from Old Latin dingua (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue, speech, language”). Doublet of langaj. Displaced native Old English ġeþēode.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: alnguage,lagnuage,langauge,langguage,languaeg,languagge,langugae,lannguage,lanugage,llanguage,lnaguage
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for language
Misspelling Variants of "language"
Frequency rank: #831 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: