minor
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "minor", 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 "minor" 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 "minor" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
minor is anEnglishadj. It means: Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option, particularly Pronounced /ˈmaɪ.nəɹ/. It ranks #2,397 in English word frequency. Often confused with mir and MOR.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | minor |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈmaɪ.nəɹ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,397 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for minor is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmaɪ.nəɹ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,397 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 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 minor, with forms such as "imnor", "minnor", and "minorr". 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, "mir", "MOR", "mint", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English minor, menor, menour, etc., from Latin minor (“lesser; young; young person”) both directly and via Norman and Middle French menor, menour, etc. Doublet of minus but not mini-. Cognate with minister, minify, Minorca, Menshevik, and possib… 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 minor, spelled M-I-N-O-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option, particularly
- 2Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 3Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 4Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 5Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 6Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 7Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 8Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 9Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 10Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 11Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 12Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 13Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
- 14Lesser, smaller in importance, size, degree, seriousness, or significance compared to another option
Etymology
From Middle English minor, menor, menour, etc., from Latin minor (“lesser; young; young person”) both directly and via Norman and Middle French menor, menour, etc. Doublet of minus but not mini-. Cognate with minister, minify, Minorca, Menshevik, and possibly minnow. Compare Latin minimum and minuō, Old High German minniro, Cornish minow.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: imnor,minnor,minorr,minro,mionr,mminor,mnior
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for minor
Misspelling Variants of "minor"
Frequency rank: #2,397 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: