mouth
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mouth", 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 "mouth" 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 "mouth" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mouth is aEnglishnoun. It means: The front opening of a creature through which food is ingested. Pronounced /maʊθ/. It ranks #1,569 in English word frequency. Often confused with muh and much.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mouth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /maʊθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,569 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mouth is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /maʊθ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,569 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 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 mouth, with forms such as "mmouth", "motuh", and "mouht". 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, "muh", "much", "myth", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English mouth, from Old English mūþ, from Proto-West Germanic *munþ, from Proto-Germanic *munþaz (“mouth”), from Proto-Indo-European *ment- (“to chew; jaw, mouth”). Cognate with Scots mooth (“mouth”), North Frisian mös, müs, Mür (“mouth”), West … 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 mouth, spelled M-O-U-T-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The front opening of a creature through which food is ingested.
- 2The end of a river out of which water flows into a sea or other large body of water; or the end of a tributary out of which water flows into a larger river.
- 3An outlet, aperture or orifice.
- 4A loud or overly talkative person.
- 5A gossip.
- 6The crosspiece of a bridle bit, which enters the mouth of an animal.
- 7A principal speaker; one who utters the common opinion; a mouthpiece.
- 8Speech; language; testimony.
- 9A wry face; a grimace; a mow.
Etymology
From Middle English mouth, from Old English mūþ, from Proto-West Germanic *munþ, from Proto-Germanic *munþaz (“mouth”), from Proto-Indo-European *ment- (“to chew; jaw, mouth”). Cognate with Scots mooth (“mouth”), North Frisian mös, müs, Mür (“mouth”), West Frisian mûn (“mouth”), Dutch mond (“mouth”), muide (“river mouth”) and mui (“riptide”), German Mund (“mouth”), Luxembourgish Mond (“mouth”), Danish mund (“mouth”), Faroese muður, munnur (“mouth”), Icelandic munnur (“mouth”), Swedish mun (“mouth”), Norwegian munn (“mouth”), Gothic 𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 (munþs, “mouth”), Latin mentum (“chin”) and mandō (“to chew”), Ancient Greek μάσταξ (mástax, “jaws, mouth”) and μασάομαι (masáomai, “to chew”), Albanian mjekër (“chin, beard”), Welsh mant (“jawbone”), Hittite [script needed] (mēni, “chin”). The verb is from Middle English mouthen, from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmouth,motuh,mouht,mouthh,moutth,muoth,omuth
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for mouth
Misspelling Variants of "mouth"
Frequency rank: #1,569 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: