rule
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "rule", 4-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 "rule" 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 "rule" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
rule is aEnglishnoun. It means: A regulation, law, guideline. Pronounced /ɹuːl/. It ranks #1,234 in English word frequency. Often confused with run and rum.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rule |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹuːl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,234 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rule is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹuːl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,234 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for rule, with forms such as "rlue", "rrule", and "ruel". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "run", "rum", "rye", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English reule, rewle, rule, borrowed from Old French riule, reule, from Latin regula (“straight stick, bar, ruler, pattern”), from regō (“to keep straight, direct, govern, rule”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃réǵeti (“to straighten; ri… 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 rule, spelled R-U-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A regulation, law, guideline.
- 2A regulating principle.
- 3The act of ruling; administration of law; government; empire; authority; control.
- 4A normal condition or state of affairs.
- 5Conduct; behaviour.
- 6An order regulating the practice of the courts, or an order made between parties to an action or a suit.
- 7A determinate method prescribed for performing any operation and producing a certain result.
- 8A ruler; device for measuring, a straightedge, a measure.
- 9A straight line (continuous mark, as made by a pen or the like), especially one lying across a paper as a guide for writing.
- 10A thin plate of brass or other metal, of the same height as the type, and used for printing lines, as between columns on the same page, or in tabular work.
Etymology
From Middle English reule, rewle, rule, borrowed from Old French riule, reule, from Latin regula (“straight stick, bar, ruler, pattern”), from regō (“to keep straight, direct, govern, rule”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃réǵeti (“to straighten; right”), from the root *h₃reǵ-; see regent. Doublet of rail, regal, regula, and rigol.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: rlue,rrule,ruel,rulle,urle
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for rule
Misspelling Variants of "rule"
Frequency rank: #1,234 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: