load
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "load", 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 "load" 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 "load" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
load is aEnglishnoun. It means: A burden; a weight to be carried. Pronounced /loʊd/. It ranks #2,587 in English word frequency. Often confused with lot and low.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | load |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /loʊd/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,587 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for load is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /loʊd/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,587 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 21 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 load, with forms such as "laod", "lload", and "loadd". 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, "lot", "low", "lol", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The sense of “burden” first arose in the 13th century as a secondary meaning of Middle English lode, loade, which had the main significance of “way, course, journey”, from Old English lād (“course, journey; way, street, waterway; leading, carrying; maintena… 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 load, spelled L-O-A-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A burden; a weight to be carried.
- 2A worry or concern to be endured, especially in the phrase a load off one's mind.
- 3A certain number of articles or quantity of material that can be transported or processed at one time.
- 4A quantity of washing put into a washing machine for a wash cycle.
- 5Used to form nouns that indicate a large quantity, often corresponding to the capacity of a vehicle
- 6A large number or amount.
- 7The volume of work required to be performed.
- 8The force exerted on a structural component such as a beam, girder, cable etc.
- 9The electrical current or power delivered by a device.
- 10A resistive force encountered by a prime mover when performing work.
- 11Any component that draws current or power from an electrical circuit.
- 12A unit of measure for various quantities.
- 13Ellipsis of viral load.
- 14A very small explosive inserted as a gag into a cigarette or cigar.
- 15The charge of powder for a firearm; a loaded cartridge or round of ammunition.
- 16Weight or violence of blows.
- 17defecation
- 18The contents (e.g. semen) of an ejaculation.
- 19Nonsense; rubbish.
- 20The process of loading something, i.e. transferring it into memory or over a network, etc.
- 21prepaid phone credit
Etymology
The sense of “burden” first arose in the 13th century as a secondary meaning of Middle English lode, loade, which had the main significance of “way, course, journey”, from Old English lād (“course, journey; way, street, waterway; leading, carrying; maintenance, support”) (ultimately from Proto-Germanic *laidō (“leading, way”), Proto-Indo-European *leyt- (“to go, go forth, die”). Cognate with Middle Low German leide (“entourage, escort”), German Leite (“line, course, load”), Swedish led (“way, trail, line”), Icelandic leið (“way, course, route”). As such, load is a doublet of lode, which has preserved the older meaning. Most likely, the semantic extension of the Middle English substantive arose by conflation with the (etymologically unrelated) verb lade; however, Middle English lode occurs only as a substantive; the transitive verb load (“to charge with a load”) is recorded only in the 16th century (frequently in Shakespeare), and (except for the participle laden) has largely supplanted lade in modern English. For the meaning development from PIE, compare Latin carrus (whence carry) akin to currō.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: laod,lload,loadd,loda,olad
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for load
Misspelling Variants of "load"
Frequency rank: #2,587 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: