slot
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "slot", 4-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 "slot" 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 "slot" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
slot is aEnglishnoun. It means: A narrow depression, perforation, or aperture; especially, one for the reception of a piece fitting or sliding into it. Pronounced /slɒt/. It ranks #6,184 in English word frequency. Often confused with so and son.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | slot |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /slɒt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #6,184 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for slot is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /slɒt/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,184 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for slot, with forms such as "sllot", "slott", and "slto". 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, "so", "son", "sox", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English slot, from Old French esclot, likely from Old Norse slóð (“track”). As a gambling machine, via clipping of slot machine. Compare sleuth. The scheduling (calendar) sense is by a metaphor whereby the time span is equated with the segment o… 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 slot, spelled S-L-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A narrow depression, perforation, or aperture; especially, one for the reception of a piece fitting or sliding into it.
- 2A period of time or position within a schedule or sequence.
- 3Clipping of slot machine (“a game of chance played for money using a coin slot”).
- 4The track of an animal, especially a deer; spoor.
- 5A crack or fissure in a glacier or snowfield; a chasm; a crevasse.
- 6The vagina.
- 7The allocated time for an aircraft's departure or arrival at an airport's runway.
- 8A space in memory or on disk etc. in which a particular type of object can be stored.
- 9In a flying display, the fourth position; after the leader and two wingmen.
- 10The barrel or tube of a wave.
- 11A rectangular area directly in front of the net and extending toward the blue line.
- 12The area between the last offensive lineman on either side of the center and the wide receiver on that side.
- 13A channel opening in the stator or rotor of a rotating machine for ventilation and insertion of windings.
- 14The inside of the "rim" or semicircular copy desk, occupied by the supervisor of the copy editors.
- 15A fish that is within regulation size limits and hence can be caught and kept.
Etymology
From Middle English slot, from Old French esclot, likely from Old Norse slóð (“track”). As a gambling machine, via clipping of slot machine. Compare sleuth. The scheduling (calendar) sense is by a metaphor whereby the time span is equated with the segment of a page or part of a device that represents it.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sllot,slott,slto,solt,sslot
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for slot
Misspelling Variants of "slot"
Frequency rank: #6,184 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: