minority
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "minority", 8-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 "minority" 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 "minority" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
minority is aEnglishnoun. It means: The state or condition of being smaller, inferior, or subordinate to something or someone else; lesserness. Pronounced /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/. It ranks #3,572 in English word frequency. Often confused with majority.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | minority |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #3,572 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for minority is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,572 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 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for minority, with forms such as "imnority", "minnority", and "minoirty". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "majority", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English minoritie, from Middle French minorité, and its source Late Latin minōritās, from Latin minor. Morphologically minor + -ity. 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 minority, spelled M-I-N-O-R-I-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The state or condition of being smaller, inferior, or subordinate to something or someone else; lesserness.
- 2The state of being a minor; youth, the period of a person's life prior to reaching adulthood.
- 3Any subgroup that does not form a numerical majority.
- 4A member of an ethnic minority.
- 5A group of people seen as distinct who are subordinated and discriminated against in a society.
- 6A Muslim.
Etymology
From Late Middle English minoritie, from Middle French minorité, and its source Late Latin minōritās, from Latin minor. Morphologically minor + -ity.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: imnority,minnority,minoirty,minoritty,minorityy,minoriyt,minorrity,minortiy,minroity,mionrity,mminority,mniority
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for minority
Misspelling Variants of "minority"
Frequency rank: #3,572 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: