paste
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "paste", 5-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 "paste" 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 "paste" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
paste is aEnglishnoun. It means: A soft moist mixture, in particular: Pronounced /peɪst/. It ranks #8,183 in English word frequency. Often confused with pat and PST.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | paste |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /peɪst/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #8,183 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for paste is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /peɪst/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,183 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for paste, with forms such as "apste", "paset", and "passte". 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, "pat", "PST", "post", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)kweh₁t-der. Ancient Greek πάσσω (pássō) Proto-Indo-European *-tós Ancient Greek -τός (-tós) Ancient Greek παστός (pastós) Ancient Greek παστά (pastá)bor. Late Latin pasta Old French pastebor. Middle English paste Engli… 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 paste, spelled P-A-S-T-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 2A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 3A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 4A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 5A substance that behaves as a solid until a sufficiently large load or stress is applied, at which point it flows like a fluid
- 6A hard lead-containing glass, or an artificial gemstone made from this glass.
- 7Pasta.
- 8The mineral substance in which other minerals are embedded.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)kweh₁t-der. Ancient Greek πάσσω (pássō) Proto-Indo-European *-tós Ancient Greek -τός (-tós) Ancient Greek παστός (pastós) Ancient Greek παστά (pastá)bor. Late Latin pasta Old French pastebor. Middle English paste English paste From Middle English paste, from Old French paste (modern pâte), from Late Latin pasta, from Ancient Greek παστά (pastá). Doublet of pasta. The verb is from the noun. Middle English had pasten (“to make a paste of; bake in a pastry”), also from the noun; compare Latin pistō and Medieval Latin pastillātus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apste,paset,passte,pastte,patse,ppaste,psate
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for paste
Misspelling Variants of "paste"
Frequency rank: #8,183 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: