paramour
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "paramour", 8-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 "paramour" 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 "paramour" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
paramour is aEnglishnoun. It means: A person who is the object of one's love, especially in an affair or romance; a lover; also, a sexual partner. Pronounced /ˈpæɹəmʊə/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | paramour |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpæɹəmʊə/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #62,396 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for paramour is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpæɹəmʊə/. Corpus data places it at rank #62,396 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for paramour in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: The adverb is derived from Middle English par amour, paramore, paramours (“with sexual desire or love, passionately; in a courteous or friendly manner”), from Anglo-Norman par amur (“in a friendly or willing manner”) and Old French par amur, par amour, para… 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 paramour, spelled P-A-R-A-M-O-U-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A person who is the object of one's love, especially in an affair or romance; a lover; also, a sexual partner.
- 2A person (especially someone who is not one's spouse) with whom one has an illicit or secret affair; also (Scotland, US, law), one with whom a married person has an adulterous affair.
- 3A woman who is the object of a knight's love, and who he fights for.
- 4God as the object of a person's devotion or love.
Etymology
The adverb is derived from Middle English par amour, paramore, paramours (“with sexual desire or love, passionately; in a courteous or friendly manner”), from Anglo-Norman par amur (“in a friendly or willing manner”) and Old French par amur, par amour, paramours (“by or through love”) (modern French par amour), from par (“by; through; etc.”) (from Latin per (“by means of, through”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through; etc.”)) + amor, amur (“love”, noun) (from Latin amōrem, the accusative singular of amor (“desire, lust; affection, love”), from amō (“to love”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃emh₃- (“to grasp, seize; to take hold; to touch; etc.”)) + -or (suffix forming abstract nouns)). The noun is from Middle English paramour, paramoure, paramur, peramour (“wife; concubine; mistress; husband; male lover; darling, sweetheart; romantic love; sexual passion; (Christianity) Jesus Christ; the Virgin Mary; divine or spiritual love”), from par amour, paramore (adverb) (see above), possibly from a misinterpretation of to love paramour(s) (“to love passionately”) to mean “to love a beloved person”. The verb is partly from both of the following: * From Middle English paramouren (“to love (someone)”), probably derived from the adverb (see above). The Middle English word is only attested in one (possibly 15th-century) source and does not appear to have been used again until the 17th century; compare William Shakespeare's use of out-paramour in King Lear (written c. 1603–1606): see the 1608 quotation. * Uses from the 17th century onwards are probably derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #62,396 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: