seed
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 "seed", 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 "seed" 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 "seed" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
seed is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs. Pronounced /siːd/. It ranks #3,846 in English word frequency. Often confused with she and set.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | seed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /siːd/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,846 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for seed is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /siːd/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,846 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for seed, with forms such as "esed", "sede", and "seedd". 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, "she", "set", "sex", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: ] From Middle English seed, sede, side, from Old English sēd, sǣd (“seed, that which is sown”), from Proto-West Germanic *sād, from Proto-Germanic *sēdą, from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“to sow, throw”). Cognates Cognate with Yola zeade (“seed”), North Fri… 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 seed, spelled S-E-E-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
- 2Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
- 3Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
- 4An amount of seeds that cannot be readily counted.
- 5A fragment of coral.
- 6Semen.
- 7A precursor.
- 8The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.
- 9The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.
- 10The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.
- 11The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.
- 12The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.
- 13Offspring, descendants, progeny.
- 14Race; generation; birth.
- 15A small particle, bubble, or imperfection that serves as a nucleation point for some process.
- 16A small bubble formed in imperfectly fused glass.
- 17A child.
Etymology
] From Middle English seed, sede, side, from Old English sēd, sǣd (“seed, that which is sown”), from Proto-West Germanic *sād, from Proto-Germanic *sēdą, from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“to sow, throw”). Cognates Cognate with Yola zeade (“seed”), North Frisian sead, seed, siad, Siid, sädj, säid (“seed”), Saterland Frisian Säid (“seed”), West Frisian sied (“seed”), Dutch zaad (“seed”), German Saat (“seed; sowing”), Limburgish zaod (“seed”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk sæd (“seed”), Faroese and Icelandic sáð (“seed”), Swedish säd (“seed”), Gothic *𐍃𐌴𐌸𐍃 (*sēþs, “seed”); also Latin serō (“to sow, plant”), Latvian sēt (“to sow”), Lithuanian sėti (“to sow”), Bulgarian се́я (séja, “to sow, plant”), Czech sít (“to sow”), Macedonian сее (see, “to sow”), Polish siać (“to sow”), Russian се́ять (séjatʹ, “to sow”), Serbo-Croatian се̏јати, sȅjati, си̏јати, sȉjati (“to sow”), Slovak siať (“to sow”), Slovene sejáti (“to sow”), Ukrainian сі́яти (síjaty, “to sow”). More at sow.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: esed,sede,seedd,sseed
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for seed
Misspelling Variants of "seed"
Frequency rank: #3,846 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: