paternoster
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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11 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "paternoster", 11-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 "paternoster" 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 "paternoster" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
paternoster is aEnglishnoun. It means: The Lord's Prayer, especially in a Roman Catholic context. Pronounced /ˈpɑːtəˌnɒstə(ɹ)/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | paternoster |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɑːtəˌnɒstə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #81,685 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for paternoster is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɑːtəˌnɒstə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #81,685 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for paternoster 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: From Middle English paternoster, pater noster, from Old English Paternoster, from Latin Pater noster (“our father”) (the first two words of the Oratio Dominica (“the Lord's prayer”)), from pater (“father”) + noster (“our”). The lift and the fishing equipmen… 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 paternoster, spelled P-A-T-E-R-N-O-S-T-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The Lord's Prayer, especially in a Roman Catholic context.
- 2A slow, continuously moving lift or elevator consisting of a loop of open-fronted cabins running the height of a building.
- 3A bead-like ornament in mouldings.
- 4A tackle rig with a heavy sinker at the end of the line, and one or more hooks on traces at right angles spaced above the sinker.
- 5A string of beads used in counting prayers that are said.
- 6Every eleventh bead in a rosary, at which, while counting the beads, the Lord's Prayer is to be repeated.
- 7A medieval artisan who crafted rosary beads or prayer nuts.
- 8A patent medicine, so named because salesmen would pray the Lord's Prayer over it before selling it.
Etymology
From Middle English paternoster, pater noster, from Old English Paternoster, from Latin Pater noster (“our father”) (the first two words of the Oratio Dominica (“the Lord's prayer”)), from pater (“father”) + noster (“our”). The lift and the fishing equipment are named from their resemblance to a rosary.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #81,685 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: