lower-case
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
10 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "lower-case", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "lower-case" 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 "lower-case" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
lower case is aEnglishnoun. It means: The minuscule or small letters (a, b, c, as opposed to the uppercase or capital letters, A, B, C). Pronounced /ˈləʊ.ə(ɹ)ˌkeɪs/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lower case |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈləʊ.ə(ɹ)ˌkeɪs/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lower case is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈləʊ.ə(ɹ)ˌkeɪs/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "The minuscule or small letters (a, b, c, as opposed to the uppercase or capital letters, A, B, C).".
No misspelling variants are generated for lower case in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Named for the original arrangement in typesetting, where the drawer or case containing minuscule letters would traditionally be located below the one containing capital letters. 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 lower case, spelled L-O-W-E-R- -C-A-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The minuscule or small letters (a, b, c, as opposed to the uppercase or capital letters, A, B, C).
Etymology
Named for the original arrangement in typesetting, where the drawer or case containing minuscule letters would traditionally be located below the one containing capital letters.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: