pack
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "pack", 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 "pack" 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 "pack" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
pack is aEnglishnoun. It means: A bundle made up and prepared to be carried; especially, a bundle to be carried on the back, but also a load for an animal, a bale. Pronounced /pæk/. It ranks #2,224 in English word frequency. Often confused with PC and PK.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pack |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pæk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,224 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pack is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pæk/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,224 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 20 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 pack, with forms such as "apck", "pacck", and "packk". 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, "PC", "PK", "pay", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English pak, pakke, from Old English *pæcca and/or Middle Dutch pak, packe; both ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *pakkō, from Proto-Germanic *pakkô (“bundle, pack”). Cognate with Dutch pak (“pack”), Low German Pack (“pack”), German Pack (“pa… 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 pack, spelled P-A-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A bundle made up and prepared to be carried; especially, a bundle to be carried on the back, but also a load for an animal, a bale.
- 2A number or quantity equal to the contents of a pack
- 3A multitude.
- 4A number or quantity of connected or similar things; a collective.
- 5A full set of playing cards
- 6The assortment of playing cards used in a particular game.
- 7A group of hounds or dogs, hunting or kept together.
- 8A wolfpack: a number of wolves, hunting together.
- 9A flock of knots.
- 10A group of people associated or leagued in a bad design or practice; a gang.
- 11A group of Cub Scouts.
- 12A shook of cask staves.
- 13A bundle of sheet iron plates for rolling simultaneously.
- 14A large area of floating pieces of ice driven together more or less closely.
- 15An envelope, or wrapping, of sheets used in hydropathic practice, called dry pack, wet pack, cold pack, etc., according to the method of treatment.
- 16A loose, lewd, or worthless person.
- 17A tight group of object balls in cue sports. Usually the reds in snooker.
- 18The forwards in a rugby team (eight in Rugby Union, six in Rugby League) who with the opposing pack constitute the scrum.
- 19The largest group of blockers from both teams skating in close proximity.
- 20A package of cigarettes.
Etymology
From Middle English pak, pakke, from Old English *pæcca and/or Middle Dutch pak, packe; both ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *pakkō, from Proto-Germanic *pakkô (“bundle, pack”). Cognate with Dutch pak (“pack”), Low German Pack (“pack”), German Pack (“pack”), Swedish packe (“pack”), Icelandic pakka, pakki (“package”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apck,pacck,packk,pakc,pcak,ppack
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for pack
Misspelling Variants of "pack"
Frequency rank: #2,224 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: