miscegenation
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
13 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "miscegenation", 13-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 "miscegenation" 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 "miscegenation" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
miscegenation is aEnglishnoun. It means: The mixing or blending of race in marriage or breeding, interracial marriage. Pronounced /mɪˌsɛd͡ʒ.əˈneɪ.ʃən/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | miscegenation |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /mɪˌsɛd͡ʒ.əˈneɪ.ʃən/ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Frequency rank | #67,653 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for miscegenation is 13 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /mɪˌsɛd͡ʒ.əˈneɪ.ʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #67,653 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for miscegenation in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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: Blend of Latin miscēre (“mix”) + Latin genus (“race”) + -ation. Coined by American journalist David Goodman Croly in 1864 and first used in an anonymous pamphlet he coauthored, which claimed to be written by a person who believed in the inherent unity of al… 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 miscegenation, spelled M-I-S-C-E-G-E-N-A-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The mixing or blending of race in marriage or breeding, interracial marriage.
- 2A mixing or blending, especially one which is considered to be inappropriate.
Etymology
Blend of Latin miscēre (“mix”) + Latin genus (“race”) + -ation. Coined by American journalist David Goodman Croly in 1864 and first used in an anonymous pamphlet he coauthored, which claimed to be written by a person who believed in the inherent unity of all racial groups, that marriage between blacks and whites would create a better race, and that the American Civil War was a fight for the latter idea. Later, it was exposed that the pretext of the pamphlet was false and that it had actually been written by a group which hoped to inflame anger, particularly against then-US President Abraham Lincoln who was up for reelection. Replaced previous amalgamation, from metallurgy.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #67,653 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: