red
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 "red", 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 "red" 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 "red" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
red is aEnglishnoun. It means: The colour of the setting sun, blood, and strawberries; the colour which is evoked by the longest visible wavelengths (between about 625–740 nm), and a primary additive colour. Pronounced /ɹɛd/. It ranks #480 in English word frequency. Often confused with RS and RT.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | red |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹɛd/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #480 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for red is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹɛd/. Corpus data places it at rank #480 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for red 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, "RS", "RT", "RM", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English red, from Old English rēad, from Proto-West Germanic *raud, from Proto-Germanic *raudaz from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rowdʰós, from the root *h₁rewdʰ-. Cognates See also West Frisian read, Low German root, rood, rot, rod, Dutch rood, Germa… 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 red, spelled R-E-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The colour of the setting sun, blood, and strawberries; the colour which is evoked by the longest visible wavelengths (between about 625–740 nm), and a primary additive colour.
- 2A revolutionary socialist or (most commonly) a Communist; (usually capitalized) a Bolshevik, a supporter of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War.
- 3One of the 15 red balls used in snooker, distinguished from the colours.
- 4Red wine.
- 5Any of several varieties of ale which are brewed with red or kilned malt, giving the beer a red colour.
- 6A red variety of an animal, such as a red kangaroo or a red squirrel.
- 7A redshank.
- 8An American Indian.
- 9The drug secobarbital; a capsule of this drug.
- 10A red light (a traffic signal)
- 11Red lemonade
- 12One of the three color charges for quarks.
- 13Chili con carne (usually in the phrase "bowl of red").
- 14The redfish or red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus, a fish with reddish fins and scales.
- 15Tomato ketchup.
Etymology
From Middle English red, from Old English rēad, from Proto-West Germanic *raud, from Proto-Germanic *raudaz from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rowdʰós, from the root *h₁rewdʰ-. Cognates See also West Frisian read, Low German root, rood, rot, rod, Dutch rood, German rot, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål rød, Norwegian Nynorsk raud; also Welsh rhudd, Latin ruber, rufus, Tocharian A rtär, Tocharian B ratre, Ancient Greek ἐρυθρός (eruthrós), Albanian pruth (“redhead”), Russian ру́дый (rúdyj) ("red", "redhaired"). Czech rudý, Lithuanian raúdas, Finnish rauta, Estonian raud, Serbo-Croatian riđ ("reddish", "red"), Avestan 𐬭𐬀𐬊𐬌𐬛𐬌𐬙𐬀 (raoidita), Sanskrit रुधिर (rudhirá, “red, bloody”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #480 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: