matador
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "matador", 7-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 "matador" 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 "matador" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
matador is aEnglishnoun. It means: The person whose aim is to kill the bull in a bullfight. Pronounced /ˈma.tə.dɔː/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | matador |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈma.tə.dɔː/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #38,488 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for matador is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈma.tə.dɔː/. Corpus data places it at rank #38,488 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for matador, with forms such as "amtador", "maatdor", and "mataddor". 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 Spanish matador (“killer”). Used in the English language as title for a bullfighter, however referred to as a torero in Spain. 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 matador, spelled M-A-T-A-D-O-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The person whose aim is to kill the bull in a bullfight.
- 2A certain game of dominoes in which four dominoes (the 4-3, 5-2, 6-1, and double blank), called matadors, may be played at any time in any way.
- 3The jack of clubs, or any other trump held in sequence with it, in the game of skat.
- 4One of the three chief cards in ombre and quadrille.
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish matador (“killer”). Used in the English language as title for a bullfighter, however referred to as a torero in Spain.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amtador,maatdor,mataddor,matadorr,matadro,mataodr,matdaor,mattador,mmatador,mtaador
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for matador
Misspelling Variants of "matador"
Frequency rank: #38,488 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: