lecture
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "lecture", 7-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 "lecture" 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 "lecture" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
lecture is aEnglishnoun. It means: A spoken lesson or exposition, usually delivered to a group. Pronounced /ˈlɛk.t͡ʃə/. It ranks #5,706 in English word frequency. Often confused with leisure and lettuce.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lecture |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈlɛk.t͡ʃə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #5,706 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lecture is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈlɛk.t͡ʃə/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,706 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for lecture, with forms such as "elcture", "lceture", and "leccture". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "leisure", "lettuce", "lectures", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English lecture, lectour, letture, letteur, lettur, lectury, from Medieval Latin or Late Latin lectura (“reading”), from Latin lectus, past participle of legō (“to read, recite”). 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 lecture, spelled L-E-C-T-U-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A spoken lesson or exposition, usually delivered to a group.
- 2A class that primarily consists of a (weekly or other regularly held) lecture (as in sense 1), usually at college or university.
- 3A berating or scolding, especially if lengthy, formal or given in a stern or angry manner.
- 4The act of reading.
Etymology
From Middle English lecture, lectour, letture, letteur, lettur, lectury, from Medieval Latin or Late Latin lectura (“reading”), from Latin lectus, past participle of legō (“to read, recite”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: elcture,lceture,leccture,lectrue,lectture,lectuer,lecturre,lecutre,letcure,llecture
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for lecture
Misspelling Variants of "lecture"
Frequency rank: #5,706 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: