service
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "service", 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 "service" 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 "service" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
service is aEnglishnoun. It means: An act of being of assistance to someone. Pronounced /ˈsɜː.vɪs/. It ranks #311 in English word frequency. Often confused with serving and survive.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | service |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɜː.vɪs/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #311 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for service is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɜː.vɪs/. Corpus data places it at rank #311 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for service, with forms such as "esrvice", "serivce", and "serrvice". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "serving", "survive", "services", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English servise, from Old English serfis, from Old French servise (French service), from the verb servir, from Latin servitium (compare Portuguese serviço, Italian servizio, Norman sèrvice, Spanish servicio), from servus (“servant; serf; slave”)… 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 service, spelled S-E-R-V-I-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An act of being of assistance to someone.
- 2The state of being subordinate to or employed by an individual or group.
- 3Work as a member of the military.
- 4The practice of providing assistance as economic activity.
- 5Synonym of utility (“commodity provided on a continuous basis by a physical infrastructure network, such as electricity, water supply or sewerage”).
- 6A department in a company, organization, or institution.
- 7A function that is provided by one program or machine for another.
- 8The military.
- 9A set of dishes or utensils.
- 10The act of initially starting, or serving, the ball in play in tennis, volleyball, and other games.
- 11A religious rite or ritual.
- 12The serving, or delivery, of a summons or writ.
- 13A taxi shared among unrelated passengers, each of whom pays part of the fare; often, it has a fixed route between cities.
- 14A musical composition for use in churches.
- 15Profession of respect; acknowledgment of duty owed.
- 16The materials used for serving a rope, etc., such as spun yarn and small lines.
- 17Access to resources such as hotel rooms and Web-based videos without transfer of the resources' ownership.
Etymology
From Middle English servise, from Old English serfis, from Old French servise (French service), from the verb servir, from Latin servitium (compare Portuguese serviço, Italian servizio, Norman sèrvice, Spanish servicio), from servus (“servant; serf; slave”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ser-wo-s (“guardian”), possibly from *ser- (“watch over, protect”). Displaced native Old English þeġnung.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: esrvice,serivce,serrvice,servcie,servicce,serviec,servvice,sevrice,srevice,sservice
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for service
Misspelling Variants of "service"
Frequency rank: #311 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: