miss
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "miss", 4-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 "miss" 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 "miss" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
miss is aEnglishverb. It means: To fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc. Pronounced /mɪs/. It ranks #609 in English word frequency. Often confused with MS and Mrs.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | miss |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /mɪs/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #609 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for miss is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /mɪs/. Corpus data places it at rank #609 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for miss, with forms such as "imss", "mis", and "mmiss". 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, "MS", "Mrs", "mix", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Verb from Middle English missen, from Old English missan (“to miss, escape the notice of a person”), from Proto-West Germanic *missijan, from Proto-Germanic *missijaną (“to miss, go wrong, fail”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, exchange, tra… 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 miss, spelled M-I-S-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc.
- 2To avoid hitting.
- 3To fail to achieve or attain.
- 4To fail to experience, attend, partake, take advantage of, etc.
- 5To avoid or escape.
- 6To become aware of the loss or absence of; to feel the want or need of, sometimes with regret; to feel sadness at the absence of somebody or something.
- 7To fail to understand.
- 8To fail to notice; to have a shortcoming of perception; overlook.
- 9To be too late to connect with or meet something or someone (a means of transportation, a deadline, etc.).
- 10To be wanting; to lack something that should be present (see also adjectival missing).
- 11To spare someone of something unwanted or undesirable.
- 12To fail to help the hand of a player.
- 13To fail to score (a goal).
- 14To go wrong; to err.
- 15To be absent, deficient, or wanting.
Etymology
Verb from Middle English missen, from Old English missan (“to miss, escape the notice of a person”), from Proto-West Germanic *missijan, from Proto-Germanic *missijaną (“to miss, go wrong, fail”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, exchange, trade”). Cognate with West Frisian misse (“to miss”), Dutch missen (“to miss”), German missen (“to miss”), Norwegian Bokmål and Danish miste (“to lose”), Swedish missa (“to miss”), Norwegian Nynorsk, Icelandic missa (“to lose”) and Latin mittere (“to send, let go”). Noun from Middle English misse, mis, from Old English miss (“loss, absence”), from Proto-West Germanic *miss, from Proto-Germanic *miss- (“loss”). Cognate with Scots miss (“a loss, want, cause of grief or mourning”), Middle High German misse, mis (“lack, missing, absence”), Icelandic missir (“loss”). Related also to Scots mis (“wrongdoing, sin, guilt”), Dutch mis (“misdeed, wrongdoing, mistake”), Middle Low German misse (“sin, wrong”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: imss,mis,mmiss,msis
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for miss
Misspelling Variants of "miss"
Frequency rank: #609 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: