peak
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "peak", 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 "peak" 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 "peak" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
peak is aEnglishnoun. It means: A point; the sharp end or top of anything that terminates in a point; as, the peak, or front, of a cap. Pronounced /piːk/. It ranks #2,847 in English word frequency. Often confused with PK and per.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | peak |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /piːk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,847 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for peak is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /piːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,847 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for peak, with forms such as "epak", "paek", and "peakk". 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, "PK", "per", "pet", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From earlier peake, peek, peke, from Middle English pek (in place names), itself an alteration of pike, pyke, pyk (“a sharp point, pike”), from Old English pīc, piic (“a pike, needle, pin, peak, pinnacle”), from Proto-West Germanic *pīk, from Proto-Germanic… 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 peak, spelled P-E-A-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A point; the sharp end or top of anything that terminates in a point; as, the peak, or front, of a cap.
- 2The highest value reached by some quantity in a time period.
- 3The top, or one of the tops, of a hill, mountain, or range, ending in a point.
- 4The whole hill or mountain, especially when isolated.
- 5visor (horizontal part of a cap sticking out in front and shading the wearer's eyes)
- 6The upper aftermost corner of a fore-and-aft sail.
- 7The narrow part of a vessel's bow, or the hold within it.
- 8The extremity of an anchor fluke; the bill.
- 9A local maximum of a function, e.g. for sine waves, each point at which the value of y is at its maximum.
- 10Something of exceptional quality.
Etymology
From earlier peake, peek, peke, from Middle English pek (in place names), itself an alteration of pike, pyke, pyk (“a sharp point, pike”), from Old English pīc, piic (“a pike, needle, pin, peak, pinnacle”), from Proto-West Germanic *pīk, from Proto-Germanic *pīkaz (“peak”). Cognate with Dutch piek (“pike, point, summit, peak”), Danish pik (“pike, peak”), Swedish pik (“pike, lance, point, peak”), Norwegian pik (“peak, summit”). More at pike.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: epak,paek,peakk,peka,ppeak
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for peak
Misspelling Variants of "peak"
Frequency rank: #2,847 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: