rack
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 "rack", 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 "rack" 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 "rack" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
rack is aEnglishnoun. It means: A series of one or more shelves, stacked one above the other. Pronounced /ɹæk/. It ranks #8,336 in English word frequency. Often confused with RC and ran.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rack |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹæk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #8,336 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rack is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹæk/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,336 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 21 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for rack, with forms such as "arck", "racck", and "rackk". 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, "RC", "ran", "ray", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English rakke, rekke, from Middle Dutch rac, recke, rec (Dutch rek), see rekken. 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 rack, spelled R-A-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A series of one or more shelves, stacked one above the other.
- 2Any of various kinds of frame for holding luggage or other objects on a vehicle or vessel.
- 3A device, incorporating a ratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
- 4A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes.
- 5A bunk.
- 6Sleep.
- 7A distaff.
- 8A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with those of a gearwheel, pinion, or worm, which is to drive or be driven by it.
- 9A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with a pawl as a ratchet allowing movement in one direction only, used for example in a handbrake or crossbow.
- 10A cranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing both mechanical advantage and a ratchet, used to bend and cock a crossbow.
- 11A set of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
- 12A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs.
- 13A bone of a horse.
- 14A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
- 15A plastic tray used for holding and moving chips.
- 16A woman's breasts.
- 17A friction device for abseiling, consisting of a frame with five or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded.
- 18A climber's set of equipment for setting up protection and belays, consisting of runners, slings, carabiners, nuts, Friends, etc.
- 19A grate on which bacon is laid.
- 20A set with a distributive binary operation whose action on the set is invertible.
- 21A thousand dollars, especially if the proceeds are from a crime.
Etymology
From Middle English rakke, rekke, from Middle Dutch rac, recke, rec (Dutch rek), see rekken.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: arck,racck,rackk,rakc,rcak,rrack
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for rack
Misspelling Variants of "rack"
Frequency rank: #8,336 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: