nail
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "nail", 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 "nail" 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 "nail" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
nail is aEnglishnoun. It means: The thin, horny plate at the ends of fingers and toes on humans and some other animals. Pronounced /neɪl/. It ranks #5,064 in English word frequency. Often confused with ni and NL.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | nail |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /neɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,064 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for nail is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /neɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,064 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for nail, with forms such as "naill", "nali", and "nial". 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, "ni", "NL", "NFL", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English nail, nayl, Old English næġl, from Proto-West Germanic *nagl, from Proto-Germanic *naglaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nogʰ- (“nail”). Cognates Compare North Frisian Nail (“nail”), Saterland Frisian Nail (“nail”), West Frisian neil, Low … 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 nail, spelled N-A-I-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The thin, horny plate at the ends of fingers and toes on humans and some other animals.
- 2The basal thickened portion of the anterior wings of certain hemiptera.
- 3The terminal horny plate on the beak of ducks, and other allied birds.
- 4The claw of a bird or other animal.
- 5A spike-shaped metal fastener used for joining wood or similar materials. The nail is generally driven through two or more layers of material by means of impacts from a hammer or other device. It is then held in place by friction.
- 6A round pedestal on which merchants once carried out their business, such as the four nails outside The Exchange, Bristol.
- 7An archaic English unit of length equivalent to ¹⁄₂₀ of an ell or ¹⁄₁₆ of a yard (2+¹⁄₄ inches or 5.715 cm).
Etymology
From Middle English nail, nayl, Old English næġl, from Proto-West Germanic *nagl, from Proto-Germanic *naglaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nogʰ- (“nail”). Cognates Compare North Frisian Nail (“nail”), Saterland Frisian Nail (“nail”), West Frisian neil, Low German Nagel, Dutch nagel, German Nagel, Danish negl, Swedish nagel, Finnish naula (“nail”), Estonian nael (“nail”), (compare Irish ionga, Latin unguis, Albanian nyell (“ankle, hard part of a limb”), Lithuanian nagas, Russian нога́ (nogá, “foot, leg”), но́готь (nógotʹ, “nail”), Ancient Greek ὄνυξ (ónux), Persian ناخن (nâxon), Sanskrit नख (nakhá).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: naill,nali,nial,nnail
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for nail
Misspelling Variants of "nail"
Frequency rank: #5,064 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter N in our English index: