sortie
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sortie", 6-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 "sortie" 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 "sortie" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sortie is aEnglishnoun. It means: An attack made by troops from a besieged position; a sally. Pronounced /ˈsɔːti/. Often confused with sorts and sort.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sortie |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɔːti/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #46,787 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 10 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sortie is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɔːti/. Corpus data places it at rank #46,787 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for sortie, with forms such as "osrtie", "sorite", and "sorrtie". 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 10 confusable-pair relationships, "sorts", "sort", "sore", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: PIE word *upó The noun is borrowed from French sortie (“act of exiting; exit, way out; (military) sally, sortie”), the feminine past participle of sortir (“to exit, go out”), from Old French sortir, from Latin sortīrī, the present active infinitive of sort… 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 sortie, spelled S-O-R-T-I-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An attack made by troops from a besieged position; a sally.
- 2An operational flight carried out by a single military aircraft.
- 3An act of venturing out to do a task, etc.
- 4An act of trying to enter a new field of activity.
- 5An attacking move.
- 6An operational flight carried out by a spacecraft involving a return to Earth.
- 7Synonym of sally port (“an entry to or opening into a fortification to enable a sally”).
- 8A series of aerial photographs taken during the flight of an aircraft; (by extension) a photography session.
Etymology
PIE word *upó The noun is borrowed from French sortie (“act of exiting; exit, way out; (military) sally, sortie”), the feminine past participle of sortir (“to exit, go out”), from Old French sortir, from Latin sortīrī, the present active infinitive of sortior (“to cast or draw lots; to choose, select; to distribute, divide; to obtain, receive; to share”), from sors (“something used to determine chances, a lot; casting or drawing of lots; decision by lot; a share”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to bind, tie together; a thread”)), possibly influenced by surrēctus (“arisen, having been caused to arise; gotten up, having been gotten up”), the perfect passive participle of surgō (“to arise, get up, rise”), from subrigō (“to lift up; to straighten”), from sub- (prefix meaning ‘beneath, under’) + regō (“to direct, guide, steer; to govern, rule; to manage, oversee”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to right oneself, straighten; just; right”)). The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: osrtie,sorite,sorrtie,sortei,sorttie,sotrie,srotie,ssortie
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sortie
Misspelling Variants of "sortie"
Frequency rank: #46,787 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: