perfidy
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "perfidy", 7-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 "perfidy" 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 "perfidy" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
perfidy is aEnglishnoun. It means: A state or act of violating faith or allegiance; violation of a promise or vow, or of trust. Pronounced /ˈpɜː.fɪ.di/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | perfidy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɜː.fɪ.di/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #92,993 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for perfidy is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɜː.fɪ.di/. Corpus data places it at rank #92,993 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for perfidy 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 French perfidie, from Latin perfidia from perfidus (“faithless, treacherous, false”), from fides (“faith”); related to, for example, English fidelity. 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 perfidy, spelled P-E-R-F-I-D-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A state or act of violating faith or allegiance; violation of a promise or vow, or of trust.
- 2An illegitimate act of deception, such as using symbols like the Red Cross or white flag in a false claim of surrender to gain proximity to an enemy for purposes of attack.
- 3A state or act of deceit.
Etymology
From Middle French perfidie, from Latin perfidia from perfidus (“faithless, treacherous, false”), from fides (“faith”); related to, for example, English fidelity.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #92,993 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: