slate
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "slate", 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 "slate" 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 "slate" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
slate is aEnglishnoun. It means: A flake or piece of certain types of stone that tend to cleave into thin layers. Pronounced /sleɪt/. It ranks #9,397 in English word frequency. Often confused with SLE and slot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | slate |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /sleɪt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #9,397 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for slate is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sleɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,397 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 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for slate, with forms such as "lsate", "salte", and "slaet". 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, "SLE", "slot", "stat", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English sclate, slat, slate (“type of rock; roofing slate; writing slate”), from Old French esclate, a feminine form of esclat (“broken piece, shard”) (modern French éclat), from Old French esclater (“to break, shatter”), fro… 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 slate, spelled S-L-A-T-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A flake or piece of certain types of stone that tend to cleave into thin layers.
- 2A flake or piece of certain types of stone that tend to cleave into thin layers.
- 3A generally rectangular piece, originally of certain types of stone and now of other materials, often in a frame, used for writing on with a thin rod of the same or another stone (a slate pencil) or with chalk; a small chalkboard.
- 4Synonym of tablet computer (“a hand-held portable computer in the form of a tablet with a touch screen interface”).
- 5Synonym of clapperboard (“a device consisting of a board on which information about a film being recorded is noted, and a hinged piece which is brought down on the board with a clap at the start and end of each take of the film; it is used to synchronize picture and sound during editing”).
- 6Synonym of clapperboard (“a device consisting of a board on which information about a film being recorded is noted, and a hinged piece which is brought down on the board with a clap at the start and end of each take of the film; it is used to synchronize picture and sound during editing”).
- 7A record, for example, of money owed.
- 8A range of things; also, a schedule.
- 9A collection of films released during a certain period, either from one studio or from a certain film industry (such as Hollywood) as a whole.
- 10A group or list of candidates for appointment or election to an office; also, a group of candidates or electors with affiliated political views.
- 11A fine-grained homogeneous sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash which has been metamorphosed so that it cleaves easily into thin layers.
- 12A fine-grained homogeneous sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash which has been metamorphosed so that it cleaves easily into thin layers.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English sclate, slat, slate (“type of rock; roofing slate; writing slate”), from Old French esclate, a feminine form of esclat (“broken piece, shard”) (modern French éclat), from Old French esclater (“to break, shatter”), from Frankish *slaitijan (“to split, break”), from Proto-Germanic *slaitijaną, the causative of *slītaną (“to cut up, split”); further etymology unknown (see the Proto-Germanic entry for a discussion). Doublet of éclat and slat. The adjective and verb are derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lsate,salte,slaet,slatte,sllate,sltae,sslate
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for slate
Misspelling Variants of "slate"
Frequency rank: #9,397 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: