spear
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 "spear", 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 "spear" 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 "spear" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
spear is aEnglishnoun. It means: A long stick with a sharp tip used as a weapon for throwing or thrusting, or anything used to make a thrusting motion. Pronounced /spɪə̯(ɹ)/. Often confused with SPR and star.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spear |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /spɪə̯(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #11,296 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spear is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spɪə̯(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #11,296 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 9 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 spear, with forms such as "psear", "separ", and "spearr". 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, "SPR", "star", "spur", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English spere, sperre, spear, from Old English spere, from Proto-West Germanic *speru, from Proto-Germanic *speru, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-. Cognates See also West Frisian spear, Dutch speer, German Speer, Old Norse spjǫr, *sparrô, Middl… 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 spear, spelled S-P-E-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A long stick with a sharp tip used as a weapon for throwing or thrusting, or anything used to make a thrusting motion.
- 2A soldier armed with such a weapon; a spearman.
- 3A lance with barbed prongs, used by fishermen to retrieve fish.
- 4An illegal maneuver using the end of a hockey stick to strike into another hockey player.
- 5In professional wrestling, a running tackle in which the wrestler's shoulder is driven into the opponent's midsection.
- 6A shoot, as of grass; a spire.
- 7The feather of a horse.
- 8The rod to which the bucket, or plunger, of a pump is attached; a pump rod.
- 9A long, thin strip from a vegetable.
Etymology
From Middle English spere, sperre, spear, from Old English spere, from Proto-West Germanic *speru, from Proto-Germanic *speru, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-. Cognates See also West Frisian spear, Dutch speer, German Speer, Old Norse spjǫr, *sparrô, Middle Dutch sparre (“rafter”), Old Norse sparri (“spar, rafter”), sperra (“rafter, beam”); also Latin sparus (“short spear”), Albanian ferrë (“thorn, thornbush”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: psear,separ,spearr,spera,sppear,sspear
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for spear
Misspelling Variants of "spear"
Frequency rank: #11,296 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: