linger

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for linger is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈlɪŋɡɚ/. Corpus data places it at rank #19,382 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.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for linger, with forms such as "ilnger", "ligner", and "linegr". 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, "liver", "liter", "loner", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English lengeren, frequentative of lengen (“to stay, dwell, tarry”), from Old English lenġan (“to lengthen, delay, extend”), from Proto-West Germanic *langijan, from Proto-Germanic *langijaną (compare West Frisian lingje (“to linger”), Dutch len… 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 linger, spelled L-I-N-G-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.