safety
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "safety", 6-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 "safety" 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 "safety" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
safety is aEnglishnoun. It means: The condition or feeling of being safe; security; certainty. Pronounced /ˈseɪfti/. It ranks #1,147 in English word frequency. Often confused with salty and sanity.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | safety |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈseɪfti/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,147 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for safety is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈseɪfti/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,147 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 8 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 safety, with forms such as "asfety", "saefty", and "safetty". 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 6 confusable-pair relationships, "salty", "sanity", "surety", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English savete, from Old French sauveté, from earlier salvetet, from Medieval Latin salvitās, salvitātem, from Latin salvus. 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 safety, spelled S-A-F-E-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The condition or feeling of being safe; security; certainty.
- 2A safety lock or safety catch: a mechanism on a weapon or dangerous equipment designed to prevent accidental firing or operation.
- 3Preservation from escape; close custody.
- 4An instance of a player being sacked or tackled in the end zone, or stepping out of the end zone and off the field, resulting in two points to the opposite team.
- 5Any of the defensive players who are in position furthest from the line of scrimmage and whose responsibility is to defend against passes as well as to be the tacklers of last resort.
- 6A safety squeeze.
- 7A safety shot or sequence of such shots.
- 8A safety bicycle.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English savete, from Old French sauveté, from earlier salvetet, from Medieval Latin salvitās, salvitātem, from Latin salvus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: asfety,saefty,safetty,safetyy,safeyt,saffety,saftey,sfaety,ssafety
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for safety
Misspelling Variants of "safety"
Frequency rank: #1,147 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: