long
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 "long", 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 "long" 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 "long" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
long is anEnglishadj. It means: Having much distance in space from one end to the other. Pronounced /lɒŋ/. It ranks #150 in English word frequency. Often confused with lot and low.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | long |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /lɒŋ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #150 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for long is 4 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɒŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #150 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 19 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 long, with forms such as "llong", "lnog", and "logn". 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", "los", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English long, lang, from Old English long, lang (“long, tall, lasting”), from Proto-West Germanic *lang, from Proto-Germanic *langaz (“long”), from Proto-Indo-European *dlongʰos (“long”). Cognates Cognate with Scots lang (“long”), Yola lhaung, l… 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 long, spelled L-O-N-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Having much distance in space from one end to the other.
- 2Having much distance in space from one end to the other.
- 3Having much distance in space from one end to the other.
- 4Having much distance in space from one end to the other.
- 5Travelling or extending too great a distance in space.
- 6Travelling or extending too great a distance in space.
- 7Having great duration.
- 8Seeming to last a lot of time, due to being boring, tedious, tiring, irksome, etc.
- 9Not short; tall.
- 10Possessing or owning stocks, bonds, commodities, or other financial instruments with the aim of benefiting from an expected rise in their value.
- 11Of a fielding position, close to the boundary (or closer to the boundary than the equivalent short position).
- 12Of betting odds, offering a very large return for a small wager.
- 13Occurring or coming after an extended interval; distant in time; far away.
- 14In great supply; abundant.
- 15Clipping of taking a long time.
- 16stupid; annoying; bullshit
- 17serious; deadly.
- 18Measuring 8½ in × 13 in.
- 19Measuring 8½ in × 14 in.
Etymology
From Middle English long, lang, from Old English long, lang (“long, tall, lasting”), from Proto-West Germanic *lang, from Proto-Germanic *langaz (“long”), from Proto-Indo-European *dlongʰos (“long”). Cognates Cognate with Scots lang (“long”), Yola lhaung, long (“long”), North Frisian long, lung, lüng (“long”), Saterland Frisian loang (“long”), West Frisian lang (“long”), Cimbrian lång (“long”), Dutch, German, and Low German lang (“long”), Luxembourgish laang (“long”), Mòcheno lònk (“long”), Vilamovian łaong (“long”), Yiddish לאַנג (lang, “long”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk lang (“long”), Faroese and Icelandic langur (“long”), Swedish lång (“long”), Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌲𐌲𐍃 (laggs, “long”); also Latin longus (“long”) (whence French long (“long”), Italian lungo (“long”), Portuguese longo (“long”), Spanish luengo (“long”)), Ancient Greek δολιχός (dolikhós, “long; wearisome”), Albanian gjatë (“long; tall”), Latvian ilgs (“long”), Lithuanian ilgas (“long”), Belarusian до́ўгі (dówhi, “long”), Bulgarian дъ́лъг (dǎ́lǎg, “long”), Czech dlúhý (“long”), Macedonian долг (dolg, “long”), Polish długi (“long”), Russian дли́нный (dlínnyj, “lengthy, long”), до́лгий (dólgij, “long”), Serbo-Croatian ду̏г, dȕg (“long”), Slovak dlhý (“long”), Slovene dolg (“long”), Ukrainian до́вгий (dóvhyj, “long”), Ossetian даргъ (darǧ, “late”), Central Kurdish دێر (dêr), درەنگ (dreng, “late”), Northern Kurdish dereng (“late”), Persian دیر (dēr / dir, “late; long”), درنگ (derang, “delay”), Sanskrit दीर्घ (dīrgha, “long”) (whence Bengali দীর্ঘ (dirgho, “long; tall”), Dhivehi ދިގު (digu, “long, lengthy”), Kalasha driga, dríga (“long; tall”), Kholosi taɽgo (“long”), Khowar درونگ (drung, “long”), Hindi दीर्घ (dīrgh, “long; tall; weighty”), Nepali दिघो (digho, “stable”), Odia ଦୀର୍ଘ (dirgha, “long”), Sinhalese දිග (diga, “long”), Urdu دیرگھ (dīrgh, “long; tall; weighty”)), Kamkata-viri drëgeř, drëgëř, drëŋëň, dërëgeň (“long; tall”), Prasuni jigni (“long; tall”). The word shows the regular historical change of a to o before certain consonant clusters such as ng (compare with other examples in Middle and Modern English such as bond, song, throng, and wrong). The o-form may have also been reinforced by Old French long, from Latin longus, from the same Indo-European word. Doublet of lungo and lunge.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: llong,lnog,logn,longg,lonng,olng
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for long
Misspelling Variants of "long"
Frequency rank: #150 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: