mayor
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mayor", 5-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 "mayor" 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 "mayor" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mayor is aEnglishnoun. It means: The chief executive of the municipal government of a city, borough, etc., formerly (historical) usually appointed as a caretaker by European royal courts but now usually appointed or elected locally. Pronounced /ˈmɛə/. It ranks #2,396 in English word frequency. Often confused with MOR and moor.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mayor |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɛə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,396 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mayor is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,396 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for mayor, with forms such as "amyor", "maoyr", and "mayorr". 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, "MOR", "moor", "Mays", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s Proto-Indo-European *-yōs Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂yōs Proto-Italic *magjōs Latin maior Old French mairebor. Middle English maire English mayor From Middle English maire, from Old French maire (“head of a city or … 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 mayor, spelled M-A-Y-O-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The chief executive of the municipal government of a city, borough, etc., formerly (historical) usually appointed as a caretaker by European royal courts but now usually appointed or elected locally.
- 2Ellipsis of mayor of the palace, the royal stewards of the Frankish Empire.
- 3Synonym of mair, various former officials in the Kingdom of Scotland.
- 4A member of a city council.
- 5A high justice, an important judge.
- 6A largely ceremonial position in some municipal governments that presides over the city council while a contracted city manager holds actual executive power.
- 7A local VIP, a muckamuck or big shot reckoned to lead some local group.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s Proto-Indo-European *-yōs Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂yōs Proto-Italic *magjōs Latin maior Old French mairebor. Middle English maire English mayor From Middle English maire, from Old French maire (“head of a city or town government”), a substantivation of Old French maire (“greater”), from Latin maior (“bigger, greater, superior”), comparative of magnus (“big, great”). Doublet of major. Cognate with Old High German meior (“estate manager, steward, bailiff”) (modern German Meier), Middle Dutch meier (“administrator, steward, bailiff”) (modern Dutch meier). Displaced Old English burgealdor (“a ruler of a city, mayor, citizen”), burhġerēfa (“boroughreeve”), and portġerēfa (“portreeve”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amyor,maoyr,mayorr,mayro,mayyor,mmayor,myaor
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for mayor
Misspelling Variants of "mayor"
Frequency rank: #2,396 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: