luke
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "luke", 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 "luke" 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 "luke" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
Luke is aEnglishname. It means: A male given name. Pronounced /lyk/. It ranks #3,312 in English word frequency. Often confused with lux and luv.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Luke |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Name |
| IPA | /lyk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,312 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Luke is 4 letters long, classified as aname, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lyk/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,312 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 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for Luke, with forms such as "lkue", "lluke", and "luek". 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, "lux", "luv", "luz", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin Lūcās, from Koine Greek Λουκᾶς (Loukâs). See the Greek entry for more. 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 Luke, spelled L-U-K-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A male given name.
- 2Luke the Evangelist, an early Christian credited with the authorship of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
- 3The Gospel of St. Luke, a book of the New Testament of the Bible. Traditionally the third of the four gospels.
- 4An English surname originating as a patronymic, a variant of Luck.
- 5An Irish surname originating as a patronymic, a later anglicization of Lúcás (Lucas).
- 6A village in Čajniče, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 7A village in Hadžići, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 8A village in Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 9A village in Tartu, Estonia.
- 10A village in Kriva Palanka, North Macedonia.
- 11A village in Moravica district, Serbia.
- 12A town in Maryland, United States; named for papermaker William Luke.
Etymology
From Latin Lūcās, from Koine Greek Λουκᾶς (Loukâs). See the Greek entry for more.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lkue,lluke,luek,lukke,ulke
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for Luke
Misspelling Variants of "Luke"
Frequency rank: #3,312 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: