shower
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "shower", 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 "shower" 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 "shower" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
shower is aEnglishnoun. It means: A brief fall of precipitation (spell of rain, or a similar fall of snow, sleet, or cascade); burst of hefty precipitation. Pronounced /ˈʃaʊ.ə(ɹ)/. It ranks #3,026 in English word frequency. Often confused with shows and shown.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shower |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈʃaʊ.ə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #3,026 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shower is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈʃaʊ.ə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,026 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 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 shower, with forms such as "hsower", "shhower", and "shoewr". 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, "shows", "shown", "sober", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English schour (“shower”), from Old English sċūr (“shower”), from Proto-West Germanic *skūru (“shower”), from Proto-Germanic *skūrō (“storm, short shower”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱēwer- (“north, north wind, cold wind, rain shower… 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 shower, spelled S-H-O-W-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A brief fall of precipitation (spell of rain, or a similar fall of snow, sleet, or cascade); burst of hefty precipitation.
- 2A device for bathing by which water is made to fall on the body from a height, either from a tank or by the action of a pump.
- 3An instance of using of this device in order to bathe oneself.
- 4A quantity of something that has characteristics of a rain shower.
- 5A party associated with a significant event in a person's life, at which the person usually receives gifts.
- 6A party associated with a significant event in a person's life, at which the person usually receives gifts.
- 7A party associated with a significant event in a person's life, at which the person usually receives gifts.
- 8A pattern where the juggler passes objects horizontally from one hand to the other around chest height, and upward over the juggler's head to return to the first hand.
- 9A battle, an attack; conflict.
- 10A shower of shit.
- 11Used as an intensifying pluralizer or intensifier
- 12A group of people perceived as incompetent or worthless.
Etymology
From Middle English schour (“shower”), from Old English sċūr (“shower”), from Proto-West Germanic *skūru (“shower”), from Proto-Germanic *skūrō (“storm, short shower”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱēwer- (“north, north wind, cold wind, rain shower”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch schoer (“downpour, heavy rainshower”), German Schauer (“shower”), Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish skur (“shower”), Faroese skúrur (“shower”), Icelandic skúr (“shower”), Norn skur (“squall”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌿𐍂𐌰 (skūra, “storm”), Italian coro (“northwestern wind”), Spanish cauro (“northwestern wind”), Belarusian се́вер (sjévjer), сі́вер (sívjer), Bulgarian and Russian се́вер (séver, “north”), Czech and Slovak sever (“north”), Macedonian север (sever, “north”), Serbo-Croatian sȅvēr, sjȅvēr (“north”), Slovene sẹ́ver (“north”), Ukrainian сі́вер (síver, “cold, cold, bitter wind”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsower,shhower,shoewr,showerr,showre,showwer,shwoer,sohwer,sshower
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for shower
Misspelling Variants of "shower"
Frequency rank: #3,026 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: