nest
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 "nest", 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 "nest" 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 "nest" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
nest is aEnglishnoun. It means: A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young. Pronounced /nɛst/. It ranks #6,384 in English word frequency. Often confused with NT and not.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | nest |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /nɛst/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #6,384 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for nest is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /nɛst/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,384 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for nest, with forms such as "enst", "nesst", and "nestt". 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, "NT", "not", "new", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English nest, nist, nyst, from Old English nest, from Proto-West Germanic *nest, from Proto-Germanic *nestą, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós (“nest”), literally "where [the bird] sits down", a compound of *ni (“down”) (whence also English nethe… 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 nest, spelled N-E-S-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
- 2A place used by a monotreme, fish, amphibian or insect, for depositing eggs and hatching young.
- 3A snug, comfortable, or cosy residence or job situation.
- 4A retreat, or place of habitual resort.
- 5A hideout for bad people to frequent or haunt; a den.
- 6A home that a child or young adult shares with a parent or guardian.
- 7A fixed number of cards in some bidding games awarded to the highest bidder allowing him to exchange any or all with cards in his hand.
- 8A fortified position for a weapon.
- 9A structure consisting of nested structures, such as nested loops or nested subroutine calls.
- 10A circular bed of pasta, rice, etc. to be topped or filled with other foods.
- 11An aggregated mass of any ore or mineral, in an isolated state, within a rock.
- 12A collection of boxes, cases, or the like, of graduated size, each put within the one next larger.
- 13A compact group of pulleys, gears, springs, etc., working together or collectively.
- 14The pubic hair near a vulva or a vulva itself.
Etymology
From Middle English nest, nist, nyst, from Old English nest, from Proto-West Germanic *nest, from Proto-Germanic *nestą, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós (“nest”), literally "where [the bird] sits down", a compound of *ni (“down”) (whence also English nether) + the zero-grade of the root *sed- (“to sit”) (whence also English sit).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: enst,nesst,nestt,nnest,nset
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for nest
Misspelling Variants of "nest"
Frequency rank: #6,384 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter N in our English index: