monitor
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "monitor", 7-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 "monitor" 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 "monitor" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
monitor is aEnglishnoun. It means: Someone who watches over something; a person in charge of something or someone. Pronounced /ˈmɒn.ɪ.tə/. It ranks #3,829 in English word frequency. Often confused with motor and monster.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | monitor |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɒn.ɪ.tə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #3,829 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for monitor is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɒn.ɪ.tə/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,829 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for monitor, with forms such as "mmonitor", "mnoitor", and "mointor". 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 5 confusable-pair relationships, "motor", "monster", "mentor", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin monitor (“warner”), from perfect passive participle monitus (“warning”), from verb monere (“to warn, admonish, remind”). Warship sense is from USS Monitor, the first ship of this type. 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 monitor, spelled M-O-N-I-T-O-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Someone who watches over something; a person in charge of something or someone.
- 2A device that detects and informs on the presence, quantity, etc., of something.
- 3A device similar to a television set used as to give a graphical display of the output from a computer.
- 4A studio monitor or loudspeaker.
- 5A program for viewing and editing.
- 6The command line interface of an operating system.
- 7A student leader in a class.
- 8A relatively small armored warship with only one or two turrets (but often carrying unusually large guns for a warship of its size), usually designed for shore bombardment or riverine warfare rather than open-ocean combat.
- 9A monitor lizard (Varanus spp. and extinct relatives in family Varanidae).
- 10A tool holder, as for a lathe, shaped like a low turret, and capable of being revolved on a vertical pivot so as to bring several tools successively into position.
- 11A monitor nozzle.
- 12One who admonishes; one who warns of faults, informs of duty, or gives advice and instruction by way of reproof or caution.
- 13An ironclad.
Etymology
From Latin monitor (“warner”), from perfect passive participle monitus (“warning”), from verb monere (“to warn, admonish, remind”). Warship sense is from USS Monitor, the first ship of this type.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmonitor,mnoitor,mointor,moniotr,monitorr,monitro,monittor,monnitor,montior,omnitor
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for monitor
Misspelling Variants of "monitor"
Frequency rank: #3,829 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: