spike
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 "spike", 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 "spike" 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 "spike" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
spike is aEnglishnoun. It means: A sort of very large nail. Pronounced /spaɪk/. It ranks #7,612 in English word frequency. Often confused with spin and spit.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spike |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /spaɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,612 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spike is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spaɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,612 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 19 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 spike, with forms such as "psike", "sipke", and "spiek". 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, "spin", "spit", "spoke", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English spike, spyke, spik, from Old Norse spík (“spike, sprig”), from Proto-Germanic *spīkō (“stick, splinter, point”), from Proto-Indo-European *spey- (“to be pointed; sharp point, stick”). Cognate with Icelandic spík (“spike”), Swedish spik (… 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 spike, spelled S-P-I-K-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A sort of very large nail.
- 2A piece of pointed metal etc. set with points upward or outward.
- 3Anything resembling such a nail in shape.
- 4An ear of corn or grain.
- 5A kind of inflorescence in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis.
- 6A running shoe with spikes in the sole to provide grip.
- 7A sharp peak in a graph.
- 8A surge in power or in the price of a commodity, etc.; any sudden and brief change that would be represented by a sharp peak on a graph.
- 9The rod-like protrusion from a woman's high-heeled shoe that elevates the heel.
- 10A long nail for storing papers by skewering them; (by extension) the metaphorical place where rejected newspaper articles are sent.
- 11An attack from, usually, above the height of the net performed with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block.
- 12An adolescent male deer.
- 13The casual ward of a workhouse.
- 14Spike lavender.
- 15Synonym of endpin.
- 16A mark indicating where a prop or other item should be placed on stage.
- 17A small project that uses the simplest possible program to explore potential solutions.
- 18An excessively high church Anglican.
- 19a structure projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus, which binds to host cells.
Etymology
From Middle English spike, spyke, spik, from Old Norse spík (“spike, sprig”), from Proto-Germanic *spīkō (“stick, splinter, point”), from Proto-Indo-European *spey- (“to be pointed; sharp point, stick”). Cognate with Icelandic spík (“spike”), Swedish spik (“spike, nail”), Dutch spijker (“nail”), Old English spīcing (“spike”), and Latin spīca (“ear of corn”), which may have influenced some senses.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: psike,sipke,spiek,spikke,spkie,sppike,sspike
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for spike
Misspelling Variants of "spike"
Frequency rank: #7,612 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: