live
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 "live", 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 "live" 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 "live" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
live is aEnglishverb. It means: To be alive; to have life. Pronounced /lɪv/. It ranks #263 in English word frequency. Often confused with LV and Liz.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | live |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /lɪv/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #263 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for live is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɪv/. Corpus data places it at rank #263 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for live, with forms such as "ilve", "liev", and "livve". 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, "LV", "Liz", "luv", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English lefe, lifen, libbe, libben, live, luvien, lyven, from Old English libban, lifian (“to live; be alive”), from Proto-West Germanic *libbjan, from Proto-Germanic *libjaną (“to live”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick”). Cognates C… 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 live, spelled L-I-V-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To be alive; to have life.
- 2To have permanent residence somewhere, to inhabit, to reside.
- 3To have permanent residence somewhere, to inhabit, to reside.
- 4To survive; to persevere; to continue.
- 5To endure in memory; to escape oblivion.
- 6To cope.
- 7To pass life in a specified manner.
- 8To spend, as one's life; to pass; to maintain; to continue in, constantly or habitually.
- 9To act habitually in conformity with; to practice; to exemplify in one's way of life.
- 10To live as; to live being.
- 11To outlast danger; (of a ship or boat) to float.
- 12To maintain or support one's existence; to provide for oneself; to feed; to subsist.
- 13To make the most of life; to experience a full, rich life.
Etymology
From Middle English lefe, lifen, libbe, libben, live, luvien, lyven, from Old English libban, lifian (“to live; be alive”), from Proto-West Germanic *libbjan, from Proto-Germanic *libjaną (“to live”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick”). Cognates Cognate with Yola live (“to live”), North Frisian laawe, lawe, lewe, lewi, lewwe, lääwe (“to live”), Saterland Frisian lieuwje, líeuwje (“to live”), West Frisian libje (“to live”), Alemannic German lëëbe (“to live”), Cimbrian and Mòcheno lem (“to live”), Dutch leeven, leven (“to live”), German leben (“to live”), German Low German lęven (“to live”), Limburgish leve, léëve (“to live”), Luxembourgish liewen (“to live”), Vilamovian łaowa (“to live”), Yiddish לעבן (lebn, “to live”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål leve (“to live”), Faroese liva (“to live”), Icelandic lifa (“to live”), Norwegian Nynorsk leva, leve, liva (“to live”), Swedish leva (“to live”), Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌱𐌰𐌽 (liban, “to live”); also Latin lippus (“half-sighted, myopic”), Greek λίπος (lípos, “fat, tallow”), Lithuanian lipti (“to stick”), Bulgarian лепя́ (lepjá, “to glue, paste, stick; to plaster, smear”), Czech lepit (“to glue, stick”), Macedonian лепи (lepi, “to glue, stick”), Polish lepić (“to mold; to glue, paste; to stick”), Russian лепи́ть (lepítʹ, “to fashion, sculpt, shape”), Serbo-Croatian лепити, лије́пити, lépiti, lijépiti (“to glue, paste; to stick”), Slovak lepiť (“to stick”), Slovene lepiti (“to stick”), Ukrainian ліпити (lipyty, “to mould, shape”), Sanskrit लिप् (lip, “to anoint, smear; to defile, soil, taint”), रिप् (rip, “deceit, fraud; injury; enemy, traitor”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ilve,liev,livve,llive,lvie
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for live
Misspelling Variants of "live"
Frequency rank: #263 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: