monkey
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "monkey", 6-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 "monkey" 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 "monkey" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
monkey is aEnglishnoun. It means: A member of the clade Simiiformes other than those in the clade Hominoidea containing apes, generally (but not universally) distinguished by small size, tails, and cheek pouches. Pronounced /ˈmʌŋki/. It ranks #6,380 in English word frequency. Often confused with monks and monte.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | monkey |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmʌŋki/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #6,380 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for monkey is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmʌŋki/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,380 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 20 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for monkey, with forms such as "mmonkey", "mnokey", and "mokney". 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, "monks", "monte", "Monty", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Uncertain: * May be derived from monk + -ey (diminutive suffix), * or borrowed from Middle Low German Moneke, the name of the son of Martin the Ape in Reynard the Fox (which may represent an unattested colloquial Middle Low German *moneke, *moneken), itself… 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 monkey, spelled M-O-N-K-E-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A member of the clade Simiiformes other than those in the clade Hominoidea containing apes, generally (but not universally) distinguished by small size, tails, and cheek pouches.
- 2Any simian, including humans.
- 3Any simian primate other than hominids; any monkey or ape.
- 4A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 5A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 6A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 7A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 8A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 9A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 10A human considered to resemble monkeys in some way, including:
- 11A penis.
- 12A small trading vessel of the sixteenth century.
- 13The vessel in which a mess receives its full allowance of grog.
- 14The weight of a pile driver or drop hammer.
- 15A fluid consisting of hydrochloric acid and zinc, used in the process of soldering.
- 16Synonym of five hundred, especially (British) 500 pounds sterling or (US, dated) 500 dollars.
- 17Synonym of face card.
- 18A person's temper, said to be "up" when they are angry.
- 19A drug habit; an addiction; a compulsion.
- 20A dance popularized by Major Lance in 1963, now usually only its upper-body dance move involving exaggerated drumming motions.
Etymology
Uncertain: * May be derived from monk + -ey (diminutive suffix), * or borrowed from Middle Low German Moneke, the name of the son of Martin the Ape in Reynard the Fox (which may represent an unattested colloquial Middle Low German *moneke, *moneken), itself of uncertain origin: ** Possibly derived from a Romance term represented by Late Middle French monne (whence Modern French mone (“monkey”)) or earlier Old French monnekin (“monkey”), originally Monnekin, the name of a monkey in Li Dis d'Entendement. Compare also Old French and Middle French monin (“monkey”). *** The French terms may have been borrowed from Italian monna (“monkey”), from Old Spanish mona (“female monkey”), itself a shortening of mamona, variant of maimón, from Arabic مَيْمُون (maymūn, “baboon”)). *** However, Old French monnekin may alternatively be unrelated to the other terms, instead being a borrowing of Early Middle Dutch mannekin (a diminutive of man, literally “little human”), and if so monkey is a doublet of mannequin; see modern Dutch manneken.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmonkey,mnokey,mokney,moneky,monkeyy,monkkey,monkye,monnkey,omnkey
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for monkey
Misspelling Variants of "monkey"
Frequency rank: #6,380 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: