possession
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
10 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "possession", 10-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 "possession" 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 "possession" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
possession is aEnglishnoun. It means: A control or occupancy of something for which one does not necessarily have private property rights. Pronounced /pəˈzɛʃn̩/. It ranks #3,777 in English word frequency. Often confused with possessor and possessive.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | possession |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pəˈzɛʃn̩/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #3,777 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for possession is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pəˈzɛʃn̩/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,777 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for possession, with forms such as "opssession", "posession", and "posesssion". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "possessor", "possessive", "possessions", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin possessiō, possessiōnis. Equivalent to possess + -ion. 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 possession, spelled P-O-S-S-E-S-S-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A control or occupancy of something for which one does not necessarily have private property rights.
- 2Something that is owned.
- 3An ownership; a taking, a holding, keeping something as one's own.
- 4A territory under the rule of another country.
- 5The condition or affliction of being possessed by a demon or other supernatural entity.
- 6The condition of being under the control of strong emotion or madness.
- 7A control of the ball; the opportunity to be on the offensive.
- 8A disposal of the ball during a game, i.e. a kick or a handball.
- 9A syntactic relationship between two nouns or nominals that may be used to indicate ownership.
Etymology
From Latin possessiō, possessiōnis. Equivalent to possess + -ion.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: opssession,posession,posesssion,possesion,possesison,possessino,possessionn,possessoin,possestion,posssesion,ppossession,psosession
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for possession
Misspelling Variants of "possession"
Frequency rank: #3,777 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: