press
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "press", 5-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 "press" 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 "press" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
press is aEnglishnoun. It means: An instance of applying pressure; an instance of pressing. Pronounced /pɹɛs/. It ranks #719 in English word frequency. Often confused with PRS and prey.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | press |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pɹɛs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #719 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for press is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pɹɛs/. Corpus data places it at rank #719 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 12 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 press, with forms such as "perss", "ppress", and "prress". 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, "PRS", "prey", "pros", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English presse (“throng, crowd, clothespress”), partially from Old English press (“clothespress”) (from Medieval Latin pressa) and from Old French presse (Modern French presse) from Old French presser (“to press”), from Latin pressāre, from pres… 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 press, spelled P-R-E-S-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An instance of applying pressure; an instance of pressing.
- 2A device used to apply pressure to an item.
- 3A crowd.
- 4A printing machine.
- 5The print-based media (both the people and the newspapers).
- 6A publisher.
- 7An enclosed storage space (e.g. closet, cupboard).
- 8An exercise in which weight is forced away from the body by extension of the arms or legs.
- 9An additional bet in a golf match that duplicates an existing (usually losing) wager in value, but begins even at the time of the bet.
- 10Pure, unfermented grape juice.
- 11A commission to force men into public service, particularly into the navy.
- 12In personology, any environmental factor that arouses a need in the individual.
Etymology
From Middle English presse (“throng, crowd, clothespress”), partially from Old English press (“clothespress”) (from Medieval Latin pressa) and from Old French presse (Modern French presse) from Old French presser (“to press”), from Latin pressāre, from pressus, past participle of premere (“to press”). Displaced native Middle English thring (“press, crowd, throng”) (from Old English þring (“a press, crowd, anything that presses or confines”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: perss,ppress,prress,prses,rpess
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for press
Misspelling Variants of "press"
Frequency rank: #719 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: