shark
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "shark", 5-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 "shark" 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 "shark" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
shark is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any predatory fish of the superorder Selachimorpha, with a cartilaginous skeleton and 5 to 7 gill slits on each side of its head. Pronounced /ʃɑːk/. It ranks #6,098 in English word frequency. Often confused with star and shaw.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shark |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃɑːk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #6,098 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shark is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃɑːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,098 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for shark, with forms such as "hsark", "sahrk", and "shakr". 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, "star", "shaw", "soak", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English shark (used by Thomas Beckington in 1442 to refer to a kind of fish), of uncertain origin. Most likely from a semantic extension of the German-derived shark (“scoundrel”), see below. The fish was originally called a dogfish or haye in En… 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 shark, spelled S-H-A-R-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any predatory fish of the superorder Selachimorpha, with a cartilaginous skeleton and 5 to 7 gill slits on each side of its head.
- 2Flesh of this animal, consumed as food.
- 3Any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, especially an extinct shark-like holocephalian.
- 4A freshwater fish that resembles a true shark (Selachimorpha) in appearance or movement; a freshwater shark.
- 5A freshwater fish that resembles a true shark (Selachimorpha) in appearance or movement; a freshwater shark.
- 6A freshwater fish that resembles a true shark (Selachimorpha) in appearance or movement; a freshwater shark.
- 7A freshwater fish that resembles a true shark (Selachimorpha) in appearance or movement; a freshwater shark.
- 8A freshwater fish that resembles a true shark (Selachimorpha) in appearance or movement; a freshwater shark.
- 9A noctuid moth of species Cucullia umbratica.
- 10A university student who is not a fresher that has engaged in sexual activity with a fresher; usually habitually and with multiple people.
Etymology
From Middle English shark (used by Thomas Beckington in 1442 to refer to a kind of fish), of uncertain origin. Most likely from a semantic extension of the German-derived shark (“scoundrel”), see below. The fish was originally called a dogfish or haye in English and Middle English. Its name in Old English is unknown, although some uses of the word hranfisċ that do not appear to carry the sense of "whale" may have been referencing it. alternative theories Some older dictionaries derived the word from Latin c(h)archarias, c(h)acharus (from Ancient Greek), but admit that "the requisite [Old French] forms intermediate between E. shark and L. carcharus are not found, and it is not certain that the name [shark] was orig. applied to the fish; it may have been first used of a greedy man". Other older authorities speculated that the word might derive from Yucatec Maya xok (“fish”) (/ʃok/), as John Hawkins brought a specimen from the area where Mayan was spoken to England in the 1560s. However, the 1442 use rules out a New World origin for the word.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsark,sahrk,shakr,sharkk,sharrk,shhark,shrak,sshark
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for shark
Misspelling Variants of "shark"
Frequency rank: #6,098 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: