pair
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 "pair", 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 "pair" 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 "pair" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
pair is aEnglishnoun. It means: Two alike or identical things taken together; often followed by of. Pronounced /pɛə/. It ranks #1,955 in English word frequency. Often confused with PR and pi.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pair |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pɛə/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,955 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pair is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,955 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 16 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 pair, with forms such as "apir", "pairr", and "piar". 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, "PR", "pi", "per", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English paire, from Old French paire, from Latin paria (“equals”), neuter plural of par (“pair”). Related to pār (“equal”, adjective). Compare Saterland Frisian Poor (“pair”), West Frisian pear (“pair”), Dutch paar (“pair”), German Paar (“pair”)… 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 pair, spelled P-A-I-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Two alike or identical things taken together; often followed by of.
- 2Two alike or identical things taken together; often followed by of.
- 3Two people in a relationship, partnership or friendship.
- 4Used with binary nouns (often in the plural to indicate multiple instances, since such nouns are plural only, except in some technical contexts).
- 5A couple of working animals attached to work together, as by a yoke.
- 6A poker hand that contains two cards of identical rank, which cannot also count as a better hand.
- 7A score of zero runs (a duck) in both innings of a two-innings match.
- 8A double play, two outs recorded in one play.
- 9A doubleheader, two games played on the same day between the same teams.
- 10A boat for two sweep rowers.
- 11A pair of breasts.
- 12A pair of testicles.
- 13The exclusion of one member of a parliamentary party from a vote, if a member of the other party is absent for important personal reasons.
- 14Two members of opposite parties or opinion, as in a parliamentary body, who mutually agree not to vote on a given question, or on issues of a party nature during a specified time.
- 15A number of things resembling one another, or belonging together; a set.
- 16In a mechanism, two elements, or bodies, which are so applied to each other as to mutually constrain relative motion; named in accordance with the motion it permits, as in turning pair, sliding pair, twisting pair.
Etymology
From Middle English paire, from Old French paire, from Latin paria (“equals”), neuter plural of par (“pair”). Related to pār (“equal”, adjective). Compare Saterland Frisian Poor (“pair”), West Frisian pear (“pair”), Dutch paar (“pair”), German Paar (“pair”), Italian paio (“pair”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apir,pairr,piar,ppair
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for pair
Misspelling Variants of "pair"
Frequency rank: #1,955 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: