mar
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mar", 3-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 "mar" 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 "mar" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mar is aEnglishverb. It means: To spoil; to ruin; to scathe; to damage. Pronounced /mɑː(ɹ)/. It ranks #5,233 in English word frequency. Often confused with my and ME.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mar |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /mɑː(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,233 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mar is 3 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /mɑː(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,233 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "To spoil; to ruin; to scathe; to damage.".
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for mar in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "my", "ME", "Mr", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English merren, from Old English mierran (“to mar, disturb, confuse; scatter, squander, waste; upset, hinder, obstruct; err”), from Proto-Germanic *marzijaną (“to disturb, hinder”), from Proto-Indo-European *mers- (“to annoy, disturb, … 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 mar, spelled M-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To spoil; to ruin; to scathe; to damage.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English merren, from Old English mierran (“to mar, disturb, confuse; scatter, squander, waste; upset, hinder, obstruct; err”), from Proto-Germanic *marzijaną (“to disturb, hinder”), from Proto-Indo-European *mers- (“to annoy, disturb, neglect, forget, ignore”). Cognate with Scots mer, mar (“to obstruct, impede, spoil, ruin”), Dutch marren (“to push along, delay, hinder”), dialectal German merren (“to entangle”), Icelandic merja (“to bruise, crush”), Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐍂𐌶𐌾𐌰𐌽 (marzjan, “to annoy, bother, disturb, offend”), Lithuanian miršti (“to forget, lose, become oblivious, die”), Armenian մոռանալ (moṙanal, “to forget, fail”), Sanskrit मृष् (mṛṣ, “forget, neglect”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #5,233 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: