president
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
9 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "president", 9-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 "president" 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 "president" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
president is aEnglishnoun. It means: The head of state of a republic. Pronounced /ˈpɹɛz.ɪ.dənt/. It ranks #340 in English word frequency. Often confused with provident and present.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | president |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɹɛz.ɪ.dənt/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #340 |
| Misspellings tracked | 14 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for president is 9 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɹɛz.ɪ.dənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #340 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 14 documented wrong-spelling variants for president, with forms such as "persident", "ppresident", and "preisdent". 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 6 confusable-pair relationships, "provident", "present", "preside", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Old French president, from Latin praesidēns (“presiding over; president, leader”) (accusative: praesidentem). The Latin word is the substantivized present active participle of the verb praesideō (“preside over”). The verb is composed from prae (“before… 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 president, spelled P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The head of state of a republic.
- 2In presidential republics, the head of government and head of state.
- 3Primary leader of a corporation. Not to be confused with CEO, which is a related but separate position that is sometimes held by a different person.
- 4A person presiding over a meeting; a chair, presiding officer, presider.
- 5Obsolete form of precedent.
Etymology
From Old French president, from Latin praesidēns (“presiding over; president, leader”) (accusative: praesidentem). The Latin word is the substantivized present active participle of the verb praesideō (“preside over”). The verb is composed from prae (“before”) and sedeō (“sit”). The original meaning of the verb is 'to sit before' in the sense of presiding at a meeting. A secondary meaning of the verb is 'to command, to govern'. So praesidēns means 'the presiding one on a meeting' or 'governor, commander'.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: persident,ppresident,preisdent,presdient,presiddent,presidennt,presidentt,presidetn,presidnet,presiednt,pressident,prresident,prseident,rpesident
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for president
Misspelling Variants of "president"
Frequency rank: #340 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "president"?
What does "president" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "president"?
How do you pronounce "president"?
What is the origin of the word "president"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: