school
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 "school", 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 "school" 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 "school" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
school is aEnglishnoun. It means: An institution dedicated to teaching and learning; an educational institution. Pronounced /skuːl/. It ranks #188 in English word frequency. Often confused with shoo and shoot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | school |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /skuːl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #188 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 11 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for school is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /skuːl/. Corpus data places it at rank #188 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 10 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 school, with forms such as "cshool", "scchool", and "schhool". 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 11 confusable-pair relationships, "shoo", "shoot", "shook", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English scole, from Old English scōl (“place of education”), from Proto-West Germanic *skōlu, from Late Latin schola, scola (“learned discussion or dissertation, lecture, school”), from Ancient Greek σχολή (skholḗ, “spare time, leisure”), from P… 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 school, spelled S-C-H-O-O-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An institution dedicated to teaching and learning; an educational institution.
- 2An educational institution providing primary and secondary education, prior to tertiary education (college or university).
- 3At Eton College, a period or session of teaching.
- 4Within a larger educational institution, an organizational unit, such as a department or institute, which is dedicated to a specific subject area.
- 5An art movement, a community of artists.
- 6The followers of a particular doctrine; a particular way of thinking or particular doctrine; a school of thought.
- 7The time during which classes are attended or in session in an educational institution.
- 8The room or hall in English universities where the examinations for degrees and honours are held.
- 9The canons, precepts, or body of opinion or practice, sanctioned by the authority of a particular class or age.
- 10An establishment offering specialized instruction, as for driving, cooking, typing, coding, etc.
Etymology
From Middle English scole, from Old English scōl (“place of education”), from Proto-West Germanic *skōlu, from Late Latin schola, scola (“learned discussion or dissertation, lecture, school”), from Ancient Greek σχολή (skholḗ, “spare time, leisure”), from Proto-Indo-European *seǵʰ- (“to hold, have, possess”). Doublet of schola and shul. Compare Old Frisian skūle, schūle (“school”) (West Frisian skoalle, Saterland Frisian Skoule), Dutch school (“school”), German Low German School (“school”), Old High German scuola (“school”), German Schule (“school”), Old Norse skóli (“school”). Influenced in some senses by Middle English schole (“group of persons, host, company”), from Middle Dutch scole (“multitude, troop, band”). See school (“group”). Related also to Old High German sigi (German Sieg, “victory”), Old English siġe, sigor (“victory”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cshool,scchool,schhool,schol,scholo,schooll,scohol,shcool,sschool
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for school
Misspelling Variants of "school"
Frequency rank: #188 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: