prudence
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "prudence", 8-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 "prudence" 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 "prudence" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
prudence is aEnglishnoun. It means: The quality or state of being prudent: circumspection and good judgment in knowing how best to act; (countable, archaic) an instance of this. Pronounced /ˈpɹuːd(ə)n(t)s/. Often confused with prudent and presence.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | prudence |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɹuːd(ə)n(t)s/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #26,210 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for prudence is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɹuːd(ə)n(t)s/. Corpus data places it at rank #26,210 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 13 documented wrong-spelling variants for prudence, with forms such as "pprudence", "prduence", and "prrudence". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "prudent", "presence", "Provence", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English prudence (“discretion; foresight; knowledge; intelligence, wisdom; act of good judgment; wisdom to see what is virtuous”), from Anglo-Norman prudence, Middle French prudence, and Old French prudence (“common sense; wisdom”) (modern Frenc… 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 prudence, spelled P-R-U-D-E-N-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The quality or state of being prudent: circumspection and good judgment in knowing how best to act; (countable, archaic) an instance of this.
- 2Synonym of frugality (“the quality of avoiding unnecessary expenditure; economy, parsimony, thrift, thriftiness”).
- 3Synonym of providence (“preparation for the future; foresight”).
- 4Synonym of wisdom (“an element of personal character that enables one to distinguish the wise from the unwise; wise advice”).
Etymology
From Middle English prudence (“discretion; foresight; knowledge; intelligence, wisdom; act of good judgment; wisdom to see what is virtuous”), from Anglo-Norman prudence, Middle French prudence, and Old French prudence (“common sense; wisdom”) (modern French prudence), and from their etymon Latin prūdentia (“common sense; discretion, prudence; foresight; knowledge; providence; skilfulness; wisdom”), from prūdent- (the stem of prūdēns (“knowledgeable, skilful; wise, prudent”)) + -ia (suffix forming first-declension feminine abstract nouns). Prūdēns is a contraction of prōvidēns (“caring for; foreseeing; providing”) (whence prōvidentia (“foreknowledge, foresight; forethought, precaution, providence”)), the present active participle of prōvideō (“to care for, look after; to foresee; to provide, see to”), from prō- (prefix meaning ‘forward; prior’) + videō (“to perceive, see; to comprehend, understand; to look out for, care for”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“to see; to know”)). Doublet of provide and purvey.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: pprudence,prduence,prrudence,prudance,pruddence,prudecne,prudencce,prudenec,prudennce,prudnece,pruednce,purdence,rpudence
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for prudence
Misspelling Variants of "prudence"
Frequency rank: #26,210 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: