pin
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "pin", 3-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 "pin" 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 "pin" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
pin is aEnglishnoun. It means: A needle without an eye (usually) made of drawn-out steel wire with one end sharpened and the other flattened or rounded into a head, used for fastening. Pronounced /pɪn/. It ranks #4,475 in English word frequency. Often confused with PM and PP.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pin |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pɪn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,475 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pin is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,475 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 24 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for pin in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "PM", "PP", "PR", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English pinne, from Old English pinn (“pin, peg, bolt”), from Proto-Germanic *pinnaz, *pinnō, *pint- (“protruding point, peak, peg, pin, nail”), from Proto-Indo-European *bend- (“protruding object, pointed peg, nail, edge”). Related to pen (“enc… 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 pin, spelled P-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A needle without an eye (usually) made of drawn-out steel wire with one end sharpened and the other flattened or rounded into a head, used for fastening.
- 2A small nail with a head and a sharp point.
- 3A cylinder often of wood or metal used to fasten or as a bearing between two parts.
- 4The victory condition of holding the opponent's shoulders on the wrestling mat for a prescribed period of time.
- 5A slender object specially designed for use in a specific game or sport, such as skittles or bowling.
- 6A leg.
- 7Any of the individual connecting elements of a multipole electrical connector.
- 8A piece of jewellery that is attached to clothing with a pin.
- 9A simple accessory that can be attached to clothing with a pin or fastener, often round and bearing a design, logo or message, and used for decoration, identification or to show political affiliation, etc.
- 10Either a scenario in which moving a lesser piece to escape from attack would expose a more valuable piece to being taken instead, or one where moving a piece is impossible as it would place the king in check.
- 11The flagstick: the flag-bearing pole which marks the location of a hole
- 12The spot at the exact centre of the house (the target area)
- 13The spot at the exact centre of the target, originally a literal pin that fastened the target in place.
- 14A mood, a state of being.
- 15One of a row of pegs in the side of an ancient drinking cup to mark how much each person should drink.
- 16Caligo.
- 17A thing of small value; a trifle.
- 18A peg in musical instruments for increasing or relaxing the tension of the strings.
- 19A short shaft, sometimes forming a bolt, a part of which serves as a journal.
- 20The tenon of a dovetail joint.
- 21A size of brewery cask, equal to half a firkin, or eighth of a barrel.
- 22A pinball machine.
- 23A small cylindrical object which blocks the rotation of a pin-tumbler lock when the incorrect key is inserted.
- 24An injection of PEDs.
Etymology
From Middle English pinne, from Old English pinn (“pin, peg, bolt”), from Proto-Germanic *pinnaz, *pinnō, *pint- (“protruding point, peak, peg, pin, nail”), from Proto-Indo-European *bend- (“protruding object, pointed peg, nail, edge”). Related to pen (“enclosure”). Cognate with Dutch pin (“peg, pin”), Low German pin, pinne (“pin, point, nail, peg”), German Pinn, Pinne (“pin, tack, peg”), Bavarian Pfonzer, Pfunzer (“sharpened point”), Danish pind (“pin, pointed stick”), Norwegian pinn (“stick”), Swedish pinne (“peg, rod, stick”), Icelandic pinni (“pin”). More at pintle. No relation to classical Latin pinna (“fin, flipper, wing-like appendage, wing, feather”), which was extended to mean "ridge, peak, point" (compare pinnacle), and often confused with Latin penna (“wing, feather”). More at feather and pen (Etymology 3).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #4,475 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: