row
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 "row", 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 "row" 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 "row" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
row is aEnglishnoun. It means: A line of objects, often regularly spaced, such as seats in a theatre, vegetable plants in a garden, etc. Pronounced /ˈɹəʊ/. It ranks #2,498 in English word frequency. Often confused with RS and RT.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | row |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɹəʊ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #2,498 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for row is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɹəʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,498 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for row 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", "RP", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English rewe, rowe, rawe, from Old English rǣw, rāw, probably from Proto-Germanic *raiwō, *raigwō, *rīgǭ (“row, streak, line”), from Proto-Indo-European *reyk- (“to carve, scratch, etch”). Cognate with Scots raw (“row”), dialectal Norwegian rå (… 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 row, spelled R-O-W, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A line of objects, often regularly spaced, such as seats in a theatre, vegetable plants in a garden, etc.
- 2A horizontal line of entries in a table, etc., going from left to right, as opposed to a column going from top to bottom.
- 3Clipping of cornrow.
Etymology
From Middle English rewe, rowe, rawe, from Old English rǣw, rāw, probably from Proto-Germanic *raiwō, *raigwō, *rīgǭ (“row, streak, line”), from Proto-Indo-European *reyk- (“to carve, scratch, etch”). Cognate with Scots raw (“row”), dialectal Norwegian rå (“boundary line”), Saterland Frisian Riege (“row”), West Frisian rige (“row”), Dutch rij (“row, line”), German Low German Reeg, Riege, Rieg (“row”), German Reihe (“row”), German Riege (“sports team”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #2,498 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: