shovel
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "shovel", 6-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 "shovel" 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 "shovel" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
shovel is aEnglishnoun. It means: A hand tool with a handle, used for moving portions of material such as earth, snow, and grain from one place to another, with some forms also used for digging. In strict usage differentiated from ... Pronounced /ˈʃʌv.əl/. Often confused with stove and showed.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shovel |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈʃʌv.əl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #15,059 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shovel is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈʃʌv.əl/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,059 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for shovel, with forms such as "hsovel", "shhovel", and "shoevl". 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, "stove", "showed", "shower", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English shovele, schovel, showell, shoule, shole (> English dialectal shoul, shool), from Old English scofl (“shovel”), from Proto-Germanic *skuflō, *skūflō (“shovel”), equivalent to shove + -el (instrumental/agent suffix). Cognate with Scots sh… 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 shovel, spelled S-H-O-V-E-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A hand tool with a handle, used for moving portions of material such as earth, snow, and grain from one place to another, with some forms also used for digging. In strict usage differentiated from a spade, which is designed solely for small-scale digging and incidental tasks such as chopping of small roots.
- 2A mechanical part of an excavator with a similar function.
- 3Any shovel in the above senses, or any spade.
- 4Ellipsis of shovel hat.
Etymology
From Middle English shovele, schovel, showell, shoule, shole (> English dialectal shoul, shool), from Old English scofl (“shovel”), from Proto-Germanic *skuflō, *skūflō (“shovel”), equivalent to shove + -el (instrumental/agent suffix). Cognate with Scots shuffle, shule, shuil (“shovel”), Saterland Frisian Sköifel (“shovel”), West Frisian skoffel, schoffel (“hoe, spade, shovel”), Dutch schoffel (“spade, hoe”), Low German Schüfel, Schuffel (“shovel”), German Schaufel (“shovel”), Danish skovl (“shovel”), Faroese skupla (“shovel”), Icelandic skófla (“shovel”), Norwegian skyfle (“shovel”), skyffel (“shovel, hoe”), Swedish skyffel, skovel (“shovel”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsovel,shhovel,shoevl,shovell,shovle,shovvel,shvoel,sohvel,sshovel
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for shovel
Misspelling Variants of "shovel"
Frequency rank: #15,059 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: