madagascar
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
10 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "madagascar", 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 "madagascar" 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 "madagascar" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
Madagascar is aEnglishname. It means: An island and country off the east coast of Africa. Official name: Republic of Madagascar. Capital: Antananarivo. Pronounced /madəˈɡaskə/.
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See how Madagascar compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Madagascar |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Name |
| IPA | /madəˈɡaskə/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #17,405 |
| Misspellings tracked | 15 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Madagascar is 10 letters long, classified as aname, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /madəˈɡaskə/. Corpus data places it at rank #17,405 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "An island and country off the east coast of Africa. Official name: Republic of Madagascar. Capital: Antananarivo.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 15 likely wrong-spelling variants for Madagascar, with forms such as "amdagascar", "maadgascar", and "madaagscar". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.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: Borrowed from Middle French Madagascar, from Madageiscar, popularly reputed as a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu by Marco Polo's misreading of Arabic. The maps of particular interest are that of al-Idrisi in the 12th century, who produced the Tabula … 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 Madagascar, spelled M-A-D-A-G-A-S-C-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An island and country off the east coast of Africa. Official name: Republic of Madagascar. Capital: Antananarivo.
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French Madagascar, from Madageiscar, popularly reputed as a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu by Marco Polo's misreading of Arabic. The maps of particular interest are that of al-Idrisi in the 12th century, who produced the Tabula Rogeriana, the most advanced world map at the time. The actual misconstrued term was Arabic جَزِيرَة المَالَائِيّ (jazīrat al-mālāʔiyy, “The Island of Mālāī”) listed alongside Arabic جَزِيرَة القَمَر (jazīrat al-qamar, “The Island of the Moon”) which lent its name to Comoros; Madagascar however likely being the original based on its dimensions. The map in question warps the direction of Africa's east coast to be parallel to the coast of southeast Asia, prompting a conflation of the regions furthest east and furthest south, in the reaches of Arab exploration. This perhaps makes the Island of Mālāī both representing Madagascar and an island in Indonesia, likely Sumatra, in close proximity to Malaysia. To conflate matters further, the populations of both regions are of Austronesian background, a fact pointed out by Arab explorers who identified Madagascar as colony of the former region. A second wave of Austronesians, including Malays, did indeed migrate to the island after the first group had originally left from what was likely Southern Borneo from linguistic and genetic analysis. "Mālāī-Gezīra" also holds connection to the term for the people and languages of the island, Malagasy, which had earlier forms Malegass and Madegass, because of dialect division.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amdagascar,maadgascar,madaagscar,madagacsar,madagasacr,madagascarr,madagasccar,madagascra,madagasscar,madaggascar,madagsacar,maddagascar,madgaascar,mdaagascar,mmadagascar
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for Madagascar
Misspelling Variants of "Madagascar"
Frequency rank: #17,405 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: