snake
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 "snake", 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 "snake" 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 "snake" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
snake is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptile with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues. Pronounced /sneɪk/. It ranks #4,895 in English word frequency. Often confused with snap and soak.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | snake |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /sneɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #4,895 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for snake is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sneɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,895 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 snake, with forms such as "nsake", "sanke", and "snaek". 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, "snap", "soak", "state", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English snake, from Old English snaca (“snake, serpent, reptile”), from Proto-West Germanic *snakō (“slider, snake”), from *snakan (“to creep, slide”), related to Old High German snahhan (“to sneak, slide”). Compare also Proto-Germanic *snēkô (“… 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 snake, spelled S-N-A-K-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptile with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues.
- 2A person who acts deceitfully for personal or social gain; a treacherous person.
- 3A tool for unclogging plumbing.
- 4A tool to aid cable pulling.
- 5A flavoured jube (confectionary) in the shape of a snake.
- 6Trouser snake; the penis.
- 7A series of Bézier curves.
- 8The seventh Lenormand card.
- 9An informer; a rat.
- 10Ellipsis of snake in the tunnel.
- 11Ellipsis of black snake (“firework that creates a trail of ash”).
- 12Ellipsis of snake game.
Etymology
From Middle English snake, from Old English snaca (“snake, serpent, reptile”), from Proto-West Germanic *snakō (“slider, snake”), from *snakan (“to creep, slide”), related to Old High German snahhan (“to sneak, slide”). Compare also Proto-Germanic *snēkô (“creeper, crawler”). Cognate with German Low German Snake, Snaak (“snake”), dialectal German Schnake (“adder”), Danish snog (“grass snake”), Swedish snok (“grass snake”), Norwegian Nynorsk snåk (“viper, adder”), Faroese snákur (“grass snake”), Icelandic snákur (“snake”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: nsake,sanke,snaek,snakke,snkae,snnake,ssnake
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for snake
Misspelling Variants of "snake"
Frequency rank: #4,895 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: