smell
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "smell", 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 "smell" 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 "smell" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
smell is aEnglishnoun. It means: A sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, detected by inhaling air (or, the case of water-breathing animals, water) carrying airborne molecules of a substance. Pronounced /smɛl/. It ranks #3,086 in English word frequency. Often confused with still and steel.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | smell |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /smɛl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,086 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for smell is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /smɛl/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,086 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for smell, with forms such as "msell", "semll", and "smel". 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, "still", "steel", "smile", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *smel- Proto-West Germanic *smalljan Old English *smiellan Middle English smellen English smell From Middle English smellen, smillen, smyllen, smullen, from Old English *smyllan, *smiellan (“to smell, emit fumes”), from Pr… 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 smell, spelled S-M-E-L-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, detected by inhaling air (or, the case of water-breathing animals, water) carrying airborne molecules of a substance.
- 2The sense that detects odours.
- 3A conclusion or intuition that a situation is wrong, more complex than it seems, or otherwise inappropriate.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *smel- Proto-West Germanic *smalljan Old English *smiellan Middle English smellen English smell From Middle English smellen, smillen, smyllen, smullen, from Old English *smyllan, *smiellan (“to smell, emit fumes”), from Proto-West Germanic *smallijan (“to glow, burn, smoulder”), from Proto-Indo-European *smel- (“to burn, smoke, smoulder; tar, pitch”). The noun is from Middle English smel, smil, smul (“smell, odour”). Related to Saterland Frisian smeele (“to smoulder”), Middle Dutch smōlen (“to burn, smoulder”) (whence Dutch smeulen (“to smoulder”)), Middle Low German smölen (“to be hazy, be dusty”) (whence Low German smölen (“smoulder”)), Low German smullen (“emit smoke”), West Flemish smoel (“stuffy, muggy, hazy”), Danish smul (“dust, powder”), Lithuanian smilkyti (“to incense, fumigate”), Lithuanian smilkti (“to smudge, smolder, fume, reek”), Lithuanian smalkinti (“to fume”), Middle Irish smál, smól, smúal (“fire, gleed, embers, ashes”), Russian смола́ (smolá, “resin, tar”). Compare smoulder, smother.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: msell,semll,smel,smlel,smmell,ssmell
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for smell
Misspelling Variants of "smell"
Frequency rank: #3,086 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: