layer
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "layer", 5-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 "layer" 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 "layer" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
layer is aEnglishnoun. It means: A single thickness of some material covering a surface. Pronounced /lɛə/. It ranks #3,635 in English word frequency. Often confused with lye and lays.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | layer |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /lɛə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,635 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for layer is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,635 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for layer, with forms such as "alyer", "laeyr", and "layerr". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "lye", "lays", "leer", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Appears at first glance to be from Middle English leyer, leyare (“a layer of stones or bricks”), equivalent to lay + -er. In which case, ultimately identical to etymology 2 below. For the pronunciation compare prayer. However, this word layer (referring to … 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 layer, spelled L-A-Y-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A single thickness of some material covering a surface.
- 2A single thickness of some material covering a surface.
- 3A (usually) horizontal deposit; a stratum.
- 4One of the items in a hierarchy.
- 5One in a stack of (initially transparent) drawing surfaces that comprise an image; used to keep elements of an image separate so that they can be modified independently from one another.
- 6One of the seven network switch pieces in the Open Systems Interconnection model: application, presentation, session, transport, network, data link, and physical.
- 7An alternative keymap accessed through a modifier key or toggle.
Etymology
Appears at first glance to be from Middle English leyer, leyare (“a layer of stones or bricks”), equivalent to lay + -er. In which case, ultimately identical to etymology 2 below. For the pronunciation compare prayer. However, this word layer (referring to a thickness of a material covering a surface) has also been argued to be from a respelling of an obsolete sense of the word lair that was once used by farmers, which had to do with soil. The connecting sense between the usual meaning of lair and the specialised farming meaning was: an area where cows typically rest, the ground being fertilised by their waste. Related to lie, ledger.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: alyer,laeyr,layerr,layre,layyer,llayer,lyaer
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for layer
Misspelling Variants of "layer"
Frequency rank: #3,635 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: