Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "pocket", 6-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 "pocket" 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 "pocket" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
pocket is aEnglishnoun. It means: A bag stitched to an item of clothing, used for carrying small items. Pronounced /ˈpɒk.ɪt/. It ranks #3,123 in English word frequency. Often confused with poet and poke.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɒk.ɪt/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #3,123 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 14 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pocket is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɒk.ɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,123 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 21 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for pocket, with forms such as "opcket", "pcoket", and "poccket". 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 14 confusable-pair relationships, "poet", "poke", "poker", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English pocket (“bag, sack”), from Anglo-Norman poket, Old Northern French poquet, poquete, diminutive of poque, poke (“bag, sack”) (compare modern Norman pouquette and modern French pochette from Old French pochete, from puche), from Frankish *… 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 pocket, spelled P-O-C-K-E-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A bag stitched to an item of clothing, used for carrying small items.
- 2A person's financial resources.
- 3An indention and cavity with a net sack or similar structure (into which the balls are to be struck) at each corner and one centered on each side of a pool or snooker table.
- 4An enclosed volume of one substance surrounded by another.
- 5An area of land surrounded by a loop of a river.
- 6The area of the field to the side of the goal posts (four pockets in total on the field, one to each side of the goals at each end of the ground). The pocket is only a roughly defined area, extending from the behind post, at an angle, to perhaps about 30 meters out.
- 7The area behind the line of scrimmage subject to certain rules regarding intentional grounding, illegal contact, etc., formally extending to the end zone but more usually understood as the central area around the quarterback directly protected by the offensive line.
- 8An area where military units are completely surrounded by enemy units.
- 9The position held by a second defensive middle, where an advanced middle must retreat after making a touch on the attacking middle.
- 10The unbroken part of a wave that offers the surfer the most power.
- 11A large bag or sack formerly used for packing various articles, such as ginger, hops, or cowries; the pocket of wool held about 168 pounds.
- 12A hole or space covered by a movable piece of board, as in a floor, boxing, partitions, etc.
- 13A cavity in a rock containing a nugget of gold, or other mineral; a small body of ore contained in such a cavity.
- 14A strip of canvas sewn upon a sail so that a batten or a light spar can placed in the interspace.
- 15The pouch of an animal.
- 16The ideal point where the pins are hit by the bowling ball.
- 17A socket for receiving the base of a post, stake, etc.
- 18A bight on a lee shore.
- 19A small space between a tooth and the adjoining gum, formed by an abnormal separation of the two.
- 20A small, isolated group or area.
- 21A state achieved with steady, enjoyable drumming.
Etymology
From Middle English pocket (“bag, sack”), from Anglo-Norman poket, Old Northern French poquet, poquete, diminutive of poque, poke (“bag, sack”) (compare modern Norman pouquette and modern French pochette from Old French pochete, from puche), from Frankish *pokō (“pouch”), from Proto-Germanic *pukkô, *pukô (“bag; pouch”), from Proto-Indo-European *bew- (“to blow, swell”). Equivalent to poke + -et. Doublet of pochette. Cognate with Middle Dutch poke, Alemannic German Pfoch (“purse, bag”), Old English pocca, pohha (“poke, pouch, pocket, bag”), Old Norse poki (“bag, pocket”). Compare the related poke (“sack or bag”). See also Modern French pochette and Latin bucca.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: opcket,pcoket,poccket,pocekt,pockett,pockket,pockte,pokcet,ppocket
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for pocket
Misspelling Variants of "pocket"
Frequency rank: #3,123 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: