lemon
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 "lemon", 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 "lemon" 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 "lemon" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
lemon is aEnglishnoun. It means: A yellowish citrus fruit. Pronounced /ˈlɛmən/. It ranks #6,066 in English word frequency. Often confused with leo and Len.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lemon |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈlɛmən/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #6,066 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lemon is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈlɛmən/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,066 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 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 lemon, with forms such as "elmon", "lemmon", and "lemno". 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, "leo", "Len", "Lon", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Arabic ليمونbor. Old French lymonbor. Middle English lymon English lemon Inherited from Middle English lymon, from Old French lymon (“citrus”), from Arabic لَيْمُون (laymūn) or Persian لیمون (limon), from Persian لیمو (limu), from Sanskrit नि… 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 lemon, spelled L-E-M-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A yellowish citrus fruit.
- 2A semitropical evergreen tree, Citrus limon, that bears such fruits.
- 3A more or less bright shade of yellow associated with lemon fruits.
- 4Lemon juice.
- 5A lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris).
- 6A defective or inadequate item or individual.
- 7Favor.
- 8A piece of fanfiction involving explicit sex.
- 9The surface of revolution of a circular arc of angle less than 180° rotated about the straight line passing through the arc’s two endpoints.
Etymology
Etymology tree Arabic ليمونbor. Old French lymonbor. Middle English lymon English lemon Inherited from Middle English lymon, from Old French lymon (“citrus”), from Arabic لَيْمُون (laymūn) or Persian لیمون (limon), from Persian لیمو (limu), from Sanskrit निम्बू (nimbū, “lime”), ultimately from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *limaw or Munda. Likely a doublet of lime. The fandom sense is named after the erotic anime series Cream Lemon.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: elmon,lemmon,lemno,lemonn,leomn,llemon,lmeon
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for lemon
Misspelling Variants of "lemon"
Frequency rank: #6,066 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: