smelling
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "smelling", 8-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 "smelling" 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 "smelling" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
smelling is aEnglishverb. It means: present participle and gerund of smell Pronounced /ˈsmɛlɪŋ/. Often confused with smiling and stealing.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | smelling |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈsmɛlɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #13,426 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 15 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for smelling is 8 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsmɛlɪŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,426 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for smelling, with forms such as "mselling", "semlling", and "smelilng". 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 15 confusable-pair relationships, "smiling", "stealing", "sterling", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is smelling, spelled S-M-E-L-L-I-N-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1present participle and gerund of smell
- 2Used in adjectival compounds.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mselling,semlling,smelilng,smeling,smellign,smellingg,smellinng,smellnig,smleling,smmelling,ssmelling
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for smelling
Misspelling Variants of "smelling"
Frequency rank: #13,426 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: