ray
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ray", 3-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 "ray" 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 "ray" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ray is aEnglishnoun. It means: A beam of light or radiation. Pronounced /ɹeɪ/. It ranks #2,087 in English word frequency. Often confused with re and RS.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ray |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹeɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #2,087 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ray is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹeɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,087 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ray in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "re", "RS", "rd", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Via Middle English, borrowed from Old French rai, from Latin radius (“staff, stake, spoke”). Doublet of radius. 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 ray, spelled R-A-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A beam of light or radiation.
- 2A rib-like reinforcement of bone or cartilage in a fish's fin.
- 3One of the spheromeres of a radiate, especially one of the arms of a starfish or an ophiuran.
- 4A radiating part of a flower or plant; the marginal florets of a compound flower, such as an aster or a sunflower; one of the pedicels of an umbel or other circular flower cluster; radius.
- 5Sight; perception; vision; from an old theory of vision, that sight was something which proceeded from the eye to the object seen.
- 6A line extending indefinitely in one direction from a point.
Etymology
Via Middle English, borrowed from Old French rai, from Latin radius (“staff, stake, spoke”). Doublet of radius.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #2,087 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: