section
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 "section", 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 "section" 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 "section" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
section is aEnglishnoun. It means: A cutting; a part cut out from the rest of something. Pronounced /ˈsɛkʃən/. It ranks #1,097 in English word frequency. Often confused with seton and sector.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | section |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɛkʃən/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,097 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 15 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for section is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɛkʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,097 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 23 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for section, with forms such as "esction", "scetion", and "secction". 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 15 confusable-pair relationships, "seton", "sector", "sexton", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English seccioun, from Old French section, from Latin sectiō (“cutting, cutting off, excision, amputation of diseased parts of the body, etc.”), from sectus, past participle of secāre (“to cut”). More at saw. 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 section, spelled S-E-C-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A cutting; a part cut out from the rest of something.
- 2A part, piece, subdivision of anything.
- 3A part, piece, subdivision of anything.
- 4A part of a document, especially a major part; often notated with §.
- 5An act or instance of cutting.
- 6A cross-section (image that shows an object as if cut along a plane).
- 7A cross-section (image that shows an object as if cut along a plane).
- 8A cross-section (image that shows an object as if cut along a plane).
- 9A cross-section (image that shows an object as if cut along a plane).
- 10A cross-section (image that shows an object as if cut along a plane).
- 11An incision or the act of making an incision.
- 12An incision or the act of making an incision.
- 13thin section, a thin slice of material prepared as a specimen for research.
- 14A taxonomic rank below the genus (and subgenus if present), but above the species.
- 15An informal taxonomic rank below the order ranks and above the family ranks.
- 16A group of 10-15 soldiers led by a non-commissioned officer and forming part of a platoon.
- 17A piece of residential land; a plot.
- 18Synonym of square mile, a unit of land area, especially in the contexts of Canadian surveys and American land grants and legal property descriptions.
- 19The symbol §, denoting a section of a document.
- 20A sequence of rock layers.
- 21Archeological section; vertical plane and cross-section of the ground to view its profile and stratigraphy; part of an archeological sequence.
- 22Angle section, L-section, angle iron, steel angle, slotted angle.
- 23A class in a school; a group of students in a regularly scheduled meeting with a teacher in a certain school year or semester or school quarter year.
Etymology
From Middle English seccioun, from Old French section, from Latin sectiō (“cutting, cutting off, excision, amputation of diseased parts of the body, etc.”), from sectus, past participle of secāre (“to cut”). More at saw.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: esction,scetion,secction,seciton,secsion,sectino,sectionn,sectoin,secttion,setcion,ssection
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for section
Misspelling Variants of "section"
Frequency rank: #1,097 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: