port
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "port", 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 "port" 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 "port" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
port is aEnglishnoun. It means: A place on the coast at which ships can shelter, or dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Pronounced /pɔːt/. It ranks #1,913 in English word frequency. Often confused with PR and pt.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | port |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pɔːt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,913 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for port is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pɔːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,913 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 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 port, with forms such as "oprt", "porrt", and "portt". 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, "PR", "pt", "put", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Old English port, borrowed from Latin portus (“port, harbour”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pértus (“crossing”) (and thus a distant doublet of ford). The directional sense, attested since at least the 1500s, derives from ancient vessels with t… 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 port, spelled P-O-R-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A place on the coast at which ships can shelter, or dock to load and unload cargo or passengers.
- 2A town or city containing such a place, a port city.
- 3The left-hand side of a vessel, including aircraft, when one is facing the front. Used to unambiguously refer to directions relative to the vessel structure, rather than to a person or object on board.
- 4A sweep rower that primarily rows with an oar on the port side.
Etymology
From Old English port, borrowed from Latin portus (“port, harbour”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pértus (“crossing”) (and thus a distant doublet of ford). The directional sense, attested since at least the 1500s, derives from ancient vessels with the steering oar on the right (see etymology of starboard), which therefore had to moor with their left sides facing the dock or wharf. Doublet of fjard, fjord, firth, ford, and Portus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: oprt,porrt,portt,potr,pport
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for port
Misspelling Variants of "port"
Frequency rank: #1,913 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: