ravin
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ravin", 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 "ravin" 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 "ravin" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ravin is aEnglishnoun. It means: Property obtained or seized by force or violence; booty, plunder, spoils. Pronounced /ˈɹæv(ɪ)n/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ravin |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɹæv(ɪ)n/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #94,170 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ravin is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɹæv(ɪ)n/. Corpus data places it at rank #94,170 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ravin in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English ravin, ravine, raven (“rapine, robbery; rape; force, violence; greed, rapacity; stolen goods, booty, plunder; prey, quarry; pursuit of prey; predatoriness, voracity”), from Anglo-Norman ravein, raveine, ravine (“rapin… 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 ravin, spelled R-A-V-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Property obtained or seized by force or violence; booty, plunder, spoils.
- 2Of a (predatory) animal: seizing or devouring of food or prey; predation.
- 3Gluttony, greed, rapacity; also, the quality of being predatory; predatoriness.
- 4A predatory animal; a predator.
- 5Obtaining or seizing property by force or violence; pillage, plunder, robbery; (countable, chiefly in the plural) an instance of this.
- 6That which a predatory animal seizes for food; prey; also (hunting) an animal which is hunted; quarry.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English ravin, ravine, raven (“rapine, robbery; rape; force, violence; greed, rapacity; stolen goods, booty, plunder; prey, quarry; pursuit of prey; predatoriness, voracity”), from Anglo-Norman ravein, raveine, ravine (“rapine, robbery; rape; force, violence; greed, rapacity; impetuousness; stolen goods”), Middle French ravine, and Old French ravine (“rapine, robbery; force, violence; impetuousness”), from Latin rapīna (“pillage, plunder, robbery, rapine; booty, plunder”), from rapiō (“to abduct, carry off; to grab, snatch; to rape; to steal”) (from Proto-Italic *rapjō (“to seize, take away”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rep- (“to snatch”)) + -īna (suffix forming abstract nouns). The adjective is derived from Middle English ravin, ravine (“predatory; ravenous”), from Middle English ravin, ravine (noun): see above. The verb is not attested before the 16th century, but words like Middle English raviner, ravinour (“plunderer; robber; rapist; predator”), ravening (“act of robbery; predatoriness, rapacity”, noun), and ravening, ravining (“(adjective) savage, ravening; (noun) preceded by ‘the’: the devil”) suggest that it existed in the 14th and 15th centuries, and was probably derived from the noun. Compare Middle French raviner (“to make furrows”), Old French raviner (“to take by force; to rush; to stream”) (modern French raviner)
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #94,170 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: