phase
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "phase", 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 "phase" 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 "phase" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
phase is aEnglishnoun. It means: A distinguishable part of a sequence or cycle occurring over time. Pronounced /feɪz/. It ranks #2,306 in English word frequency. Often confused with pose and phat.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | phase |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /feɪz/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,306 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for phase is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /feɪz/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,306 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 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 phase, with forms such as "hpase", "pahse", and "phaes". 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, "pose", "phat", "place", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From New Latin phasis, from Ancient Greek φάσις (phásis, “an appearance”), from φαίνω (phaínō, “to cause to appear”); compare phantasm and see face. 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 phase, spelled P-H-A-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A distinguishable part of a sequence or cycle occurring over time.
- 2That which is exhibited to the eye; the appearance which anything manifests, especially any one among different and varying appearances of the same object.
- 3Any appearance or aspect of an object of mental apprehension or view.
- 4A particular appearance or state in a regularly recurring cycle of changes with respect to quantity of illumination or form, or the absence, of a body's illuminated disk. Illustrated in Wikipedia's article Lunar phase.
- 5Any one point or portion in a recurring series of changes, as in the changes of motion of one of the particles constituting a wave or vibration; one portion of a series of such changes, in distinction from a contrasted portion, as the portion on one side of a position of equilibrium, in contrast with that on the opposite side.
- 6A component in a material system that is distinguished by chemical composition and/or physical state (solid, liquid or gas) and/or crystal structure. It is delineated from an adjoining phase by an abrupt change in one or more of those conditions.
- 7In certain organisms, one of two or more colour variations characteristic of the species, but independent of the ordinary seasonal and sexual differences, and often also of age.
- 8The period of play between consecutive breakdowns.
- 9A haplotype.
- 10The counterclockwise angle from the positive half of the real number line to the vector pointing to a complex number on an Argand diagram of the complex plane, which has the positive real line pointing right and the positive imaginary number line pointing up.
- 11A distortion caused by a difference in the speed of propagation for different frequencies
- 12In a polyphase electrical power system, one of the power-carrying conductors, or the alternating current carried by it.
Etymology
From New Latin phasis, from Ancient Greek φάσις (phásis, “an appearance”), from φαίνω (phaínō, “to cause to appear”); compare phantasm and see face.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hpase,pahse,phaes,phasse,phhase,phsae,pphase
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for phase
Misspelling Variants of "phase"
Frequency rank: #2,306 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: