lock
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 "lock", 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 "lock" 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 "lock" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
lock is aEnglishnoun. It means: Something used for fastening, which can only be opened with a key or combination. Pronounced /lɒk/. It ranks #2,954 in English word frequency. Often confused with lot and low.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lock |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /lɒk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,954 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lock is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɒk/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,954 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.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 lock, with forms such as "lcok", "llock", and "locck". 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: From Middle English lok, from Old English loc, from Proto-West Germanic *lok, from Proto-Germanic *luką from Proto-Indo-European *lewg- (“to bend; turn”). Cognate with Cimbrian loch, lòch (“hole”), Dutch lok (“hole”), German Loch (“hole”), German Low German… 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 lock, spelled L-O-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Something used for fastening, which can only be opened with a key or combination.
- 2A mutex or other token restricting access to a resource.
- 3A segment of a canal or other navigable waterway enclosed by gates, used for raising and lowering boats between levels.
- 4The firing mechanism.
- 5Complete control over a situation.
- 6Something sure to be a success.
- 7Synonym of Dutch book.
- 8A player in the scrum behind the front row, usually the tallest members of the team.
- 9A fastening together or interlacing; a closing of one thing upon another; a state of being fixed or immovable.
- 10A place impossible to get out of, as by a lock.
- 11A device for keeping a wheel from turning.
- 12A grapple in wrestling.
Etymology
From Middle English lok, from Old English loc, from Proto-West Germanic *lok, from Proto-Germanic *luką from Proto-Indo-European *lewg- (“to bend; turn”). Cognate with Cimbrian loch, lòch (“hole”), Dutch lok (“hole”), German Loch (“hole”), German Low German Lock (“hole”), Luxembourgish Lach (“hole”), Vilamovian łöch (“hole”), Yiddish לאָך (lokh, “hole”), Danish låg (“lid, cover”), Norwegian Bokmål lokk (“lid, cover”), Norwegian Nynorsk lok, lokk (“lid, cover”). more detail The verb is from Middle English locken, lokken, louken, from Old English lūcan, Proto-West Germanic *lūkan, from Proto-Germanic *lūkaną. Cognate with Dutch luiken (“to close, to shut”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål lukke (“to close, to shut”), Faroese lúka (“to end, to finish”), Icelandic ljúka (“to close, to shut”), Norwegian Nynorsk lukka (“to close, to shut”). Related to luxe via Latin.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lcok,llock,locck,lockk,lokc,olck
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for lock
Misspelling Variants of "lock"
Frequency rank: #2,954 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: