list
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "list", 4-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 "list" 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 "list" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
list is aEnglishnoun. It means: A strip of fabric, especially from the edge of a piece of cloth. Pronounced /lɪst/. It ranks #531 in English word frequency. Often confused with Lt and Ls.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | list |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /lɪst/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #531 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for list is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɪst/. Corpus data places it at rank #531 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for list, with forms such as "ilst", "lisst", and "listt". 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, "Lt", "Ls", "lot", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English lī̆st, lī̆ste (“band, stripe; hem, selvage; border, edge, rim; list, specification; barriers enclosing area for jousting, etc.”), from Old English līste (“hem, edge, strip”), or Old French liste, listre (“border; band; strip of paper; li… 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 list, spelled L-I-S-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A strip of fabric, especially from the edge of a piece of cloth.
- 2Material used for cloth selvage.
- 3A register or roll of paper consisting of a compilation or enumeration of a set of possible items; the compilation or enumeration itself.
- 4The barriers or palisades used to fence off a space for jousting or tilting tournaments.
- 5The scene of a military contest; the ground or field of combat; an enclosed space that serves as a battlefield; the site of a pitched battle.
- 6A codified representation of a list used to store data or in processing; especially, in the Lisp programming language, a data structure consisting of a sequence of zero or more items.
- 7A little square moulding; a fillet or listel.
- 8A narrow strip of wood, especially sapwood, cut from the edge of a board or plank.
- 9A piece of woollen cloth with which the yarns are grasped by a worker.
- 10The first thin coating of tin; a wire-like rim of tin left on an edge of the plate after it is coated.
- 11A stripe.
- 12A boundary or limit; a border.
Etymology
From Middle English lī̆st, lī̆ste (“band, stripe; hem, selvage; border, edge, rim; list, specification; barriers enclosing area for jousting, etc.”), from Old English līste (“hem, edge, strip”), or Old French liste, listre (“border; band; strip of paper; list”), or Medieval Latin lista, all from Proto-West Germanic *līstā, from Proto-Germanic *līstǭ (“band, strip; hem, selvage; border, edge”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *leys- (“to trace, track”). Cognates * Saterland Frisian Lieste (“margin, strip, list”) * Dutch lijst (“picture frame, list”) * German Low German Liest (“edging, border”) * German Leiste (“strip, rail, ledge; (heraldry) bar”) * Swedish lista (“list”) * Icelandic lista listi (“list”) * Italian lista (“list; strip”) * Portuguese lista (“list”) * Spanish lista (“list, roll; stripe”) * Galician lista (“band, strip; list”) * Finnish lista (“(informal) list; batten”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ilst,lisst,listt,lits,llist,lsit
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for list
Misspelling Variants of "list"
Frequency rank: #531 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: