post
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 "post", 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 "post" 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 "post" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
post is aEnglishnoun. It means: A long dowel or plank protruding from the ground; a fencepost; a lightpost. Pronounced /pəʊst/. It ranks #360 in English word frequency. Often confused with pt and PS.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | post |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pəʊst/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #360 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for post is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pəʊst/. Corpus data places it at rank #360 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 10 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 post, with forms such as "opst", "posst", and "postt". 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, "pt", "PS", "put", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Old English post (“pillar, door-post”) and Latin postis (“a post, a door-post”) through Old French. . 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 post, spelled P-O-S-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A long dowel or plank protruding from the ground; a fencepost; a lightpost.
- 2A stud; a two-by-four.
- 3A pole in a battery.
- 4A long, narrow piece inserted into a root canal to provide retention for a crown.
- 5A prolonged final melody note, among moving harmony notes.
- 6A printing paper size measuring 19.25 inches x 15.5 inches.
- 7A goalpost.
- 8A location on a basketball court near the basket.
- 9The doorpost of a victualler's shop or inn, on which were chalked the scores of customers; hence, a score; a debt.
- 10The vertical part of a crochet stitch.
Etymology
Inherited from Old English post (“pillar, door-post”) and Latin postis (“a post, a door-post”) through Old French. .
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: opst,posst,postt,ppost,psot
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for post
Misspelling Variants of "post"
Frequency rank: #360 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: