male
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "male", 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 "male" 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 "male" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
male is anEnglishadj. It means: Belonging to the sex which typically produces sperm, or to the gender which is typically associated with it. Pronounced /meɪl/. It ranks #1,371 in English word frequency. Often confused with ME and ML.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | male |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /meɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,371 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for male is 4 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /meɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,371 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 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 male, with forms such as "amle", "mael", and "malle". 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, "ME", "ML", "may", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Latin mās Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -ulus Latin -culus Latin masculus Vulgar Latin masclus Old French maslebor. Middle English male English male From Middle English male, borrowed from Old French malle, masle (Modern… 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 male, spelled M-A-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Belonging to the sex which typically produces sperm, or to the gender which is typically associated with it.
- 2Characteristic of this sex/gender. (Compare masculine, manly.)
- 3Tending to lead to or regulate the development of sexual characteristics typical of this sex.
- 4Masculine; of the masculine grammatical gender.
- 5Having the F factor; able to impart DNA into another bacterium which does not have the F factor (a female).
- 6Of instruments, tools, or connectors: designed to fit into or penetrate a female counterpart, as in a connector, pipe fitting or laboratory glassware.
Etymology
Etymology tree Latin mās Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -ulus Latin -culus Latin masculus Vulgar Latin masclus Old French maslebor. Middle English male English male From Middle English male, borrowed from Old French malle, masle (Modern French mâle), from Latin masculus (“masculine, a male”), diminutive of mās (“male, masculine”). Doublet of macho. Displaced native Old English wǣpned (“male”, literally “weaponed”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amle,mael,malle,mlae,mmale
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for male
Misspelling Variants of "male"
Frequency rank: #1,371 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: