most
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 "most", 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 "most" 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 "most" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
most is aEnglishdet. It means: superlative degree of much. Pronounced /ˈməʊst/. It ranks #104 in English word frequency. Often confused with MS and MT.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | most |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Det |
| IPA | /ˈməʊst/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #104 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for most is 4 letters long, classified as adet, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈməʊst/. Corpus data places it at rank #104 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for most, with forms such as "mmost", "mosst", and "mostt". 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", "MT", "Mrs", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *meh₂-der. Proto-Germanic *maiz Proto-Germanic *maistaz Proto-Germanic *maist Proto-West Germanic *maist Old English mǣst Middle English English most From Middle English most, moste, from Old English mǣst, māst, from Proto… 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 most, spelled M-O-S-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1superlative degree of much.
- 2superlative degree of many: the comparatively largest number of (construed with the definite article)
- 3superlative degree of many: the majority of; more than half of (construed without the definite article)
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *meh₂-der. Proto-Germanic *maiz Proto-Germanic *maistaz Proto-Germanic *maist Proto-West Germanic *maist Old English mǣst Middle English English most From Middle English most, moste, from Old English mǣst, māst, from Proto-Germanic *maistaz, *maist. Cognate with Scots mast, maist (“most”), Saterland Frisian maast (“most”), West Frisian meast (“most”), Dutch meest (“most”), German meist (“most”), Danish and Swedish mest (“most”), Icelandic mestur (“most”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmost,mosst,mostt,mots,msot,omst
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for most
Misspelling Variants of "most"
Frequency rank: #104 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: