residue
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "residue", 7-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 "residue" 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 "residue" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
residue is aEnglishnoun. It means: That which persists or remains following the removal or elimination of other elements. Pronounced /ˈɹɛzɪduː/. Often confused with retinue and rescue.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | residue |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɹɛzɪduː/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #14,401 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for residue is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɹɛzɪduː/. Corpus data places it at rank #14,401 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.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for residue, with forms such as "ersidue", "reisdue", and "resdiue". 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, "retinue", "rescue", "reside", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English residue, from Old French residu, from Latin residuum, neuter of residuus (“remaining”), from resideō (“I remain behind”). Doublet of residuum. 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 residue, spelled R-E-S-I-D-U-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1That which persists or remains following the removal or elimination of other elements.
- 2The substance that remains after evaporation, distillation, filtration or any similar process.
- 3A molecule that is released from a polymer after bonds between neighbouring monomers are broken, such as an amino acid in a polypeptide chain.
- 4Whatever property or effects are left in an estate after payment of all debts, other charges and deduction of what is specifically bequeathed by the testator.
- 5A representative element of an equivalence class modulo some base, conventionally in the half-open interval from zero to the base; the nonnegative remainder after dividing a number by a base.
- 6A form of complex number, proportional to the contour integral of a meromorphic function along a path enclosing one of its singularities.
Etymology
From Middle English residue, from Old French residu, from Latin residuum, neuter of residuus (“remaining”), from resideō (“I remain behind”). Doublet of residuum.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ersidue,reisdue,resdiue,residdue,resideu,resiude,ressidue,rresidue,rseidue
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for residue
Misspelling Variants of "residue"
Frequency rank: #14,401 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: