mound
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mound", 5-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 "mound" 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 "mound" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mound is aEnglishnoun. It means: An artificial hill or elevation of earth; a raised bank; an embankment thrown up for defense Pronounced /maʊnd/. Often confused with MUD and mun.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mound |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /maʊnd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #13,021 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mound is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /maʊnd/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,021 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for mound, with forms such as "mmound", "monud", and "moudn". 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, "MUD", "mun", "muni", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From earlier meaning "hedge, fence", from Middle English mound, mund (“protection, boundary, raised earthen rampart”), from Old English mund (“hand, hand of protection, protector, guardianship”), from Proto-West Germanic *mundu, from Proto-Germanic *mundō (… 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 mound, spelled M-O-U-N-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An artificial hill or elevation of earth; a raised bank; an embankment thrown up for defense
- 2A natural elevation appearing as if thrown up artificially; a regular and isolated hill, hillock, or knoll.
- 3Elevated area of dirt upon which the pitcher stands to pitch.
- 4A ball or globe forming part of the regalia of an emperor or other sovereign. It is encircled with bands, enriched with precious stones, and surmounted with a cross.
- 5The mons veneris.
- 6A hand.
- 7A protection; restraint; curb.
- 8A helmet.
- 9Might; size.
- 10a large amount of something.
Etymology
From earlier meaning "hedge, fence", from Middle English mound, mund (“protection, boundary, raised earthen rampart”), from Old English mund (“hand, hand of protection, protector, guardianship”), from Proto-West Germanic *mundu, from Proto-Germanic *mundō (“hand”), *munduz (“protection, patron”), from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂-nt-éh₂ (“the beckoning one”), from *(s)meh₂- (“to beckon”). Cognate with Old Frisian mund (“guardianship”), Middle Dutch mond (“protection”), Old High German munt (“hand, protection”) German Mündel (“ward”), Vormund (“guardian”)), Icelandic and Old Norse mund (“hand”), and possibly Latin manus (“hand”), Ancient Greek μάρη (márē, “hand”). Not related to mount.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmound,monud,moudn,moundd,mounnd,muond,omund
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for mound
Misspelling Variants of "mound"
Frequency rank: #13,021 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: