soldier
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "soldier", 7-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 "soldier" 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 "soldier" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
soldier is aEnglishnoun. It means: A member of a ground-based army, of any rank, but especially an enlisted member. Pronounced /ˈsəʊld͡ʒə/. It ranks #3,262 in English word frequency. Often confused with solver and soldiers.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | soldier |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsəʊld͡ʒə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #3,262 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for soldier is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsəʊld͡ʒə/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,262 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for soldier, with forms such as "osldier", "slodier", and "sodlier". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "solver", "soldiers", "solder", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English soudeour, from Old French soudier or soudeour (“mercenary”), from Medieval Latin soldarius (“soldier (one having pay)”), from Late Latin solidus, a type of coin. Displaced Old English cempa (whence obsolete kemp). (red herring)… 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 soldier, spelled S-O-L-D-I-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A member of a ground-based army, of any rank, but especially an enlisted member.
- 2Any member of a military, regardless of specialty.
- 3An enlisted member of a military service, as distinguished from a commissioned officer.
- 4A guardsman.
- 5A member of the Salvation Army.
- 6A low-ranking gangster or member of a gang, especially the mafia, who engages in physical conflict.
- 7A piece of buttered bread (or toast), cut into a long thin strip for dipping into a soft-boiled egg.
- 8A term of approbation for a young boy.
- 9Someone who fights or toils well.
- 10A red or cuckoo gurnard (Chelidonichthys cuculus).
- 11One of the asexual polymorphic forms of termites, in which the head and jaws are very large and strong. The soldiers serve to defend the nest.
- 12A red herring (cured kipper with flesh turned red).
- 13A xiangqi piece that moves and captures by advancing one point. Once it has crossed the river, it may also move and capture one point horizontally.
- 14A brick, for example in a course of brickwork, that is laid vertically on its shortest end (smallest face), so that its tallest and slimmest face faces the outside of the wall.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English soudeour, from Old French soudier or soudeour (“mercenary”), from Medieval Latin soldarius (“soldier (one having pay)”), from Late Latin solidus, a type of coin. Displaced Old English cempa (whence obsolete kemp). (red herring): An allusion to soldiers' red uniforms; red herring is, reciprocally, a slang term for "soldier".
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: osldier,slodier,sodlier,solddier,soldeir,soldierr,soldire,solider,solldier,ssoldier
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for soldier
Misspelling Variants of "soldier"
Frequency rank: #3,262 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "soldier"?
What does "soldier" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "soldier"?
How do you pronounce "soldier"?
What is the origin of the word "soldier"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: