sherlock
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sherlock", 8-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 "sherlock" 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 "sherlock" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
Sherlock is aEnglishname. It means: An English surname transferred from the nickname. Pronounced /ˈʃɜɹ.lɒk/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Sherlock |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Name |
| IPA | /ˈʃɜɹ.lɒk/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #10,766 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Sherlock is 8 letters long, classified as aname, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈʃɜɹ.lɒk/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,766 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 13 documented wrong-spelling variants for Sherlock, with forms such as "hserlock", "sehrlock", and "shelrock". 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 is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Supposedly from an Old English scir-locc (“bright-lock”). One of a group of surnames originally denoting hair colour, parallel to Blacklock, Harlock (Old English har (“grey”)), Silverlock. In the sense of “a detective”, from Sherlock Holmes. In the computin… 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 Sherlock, spelled S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An English surname transferred from the nickname.
- 2A male given name transferred from the surname, of rare usage.
- 3A detective, especially used sarcastically to address somebody who has stated the obvious.
Etymology
Supposedly from an Old English scir-locc (“bright-lock”). One of a group of surnames originally denoting hair colour, parallel to Blacklock, Harlock (Old English har (“grey”)), Silverlock. In the sense of “a detective”, from Sherlock Holmes. In the computing verb sense, refers to the software Sherlock, which in 2002 came to replicate some of the features of an earlier complementary program called Watson.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hserlock,sehrlock,shelrock,sherlcok,sherllock,sherlocck,sherlockk,sherlokc,sherolck,sherrlock,shherlock,shrelock,ssherlock
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for Sherlock
Misspelling Variants of "Sherlock"
Frequency rank: #10,766 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: