spot
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "spot", 4-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 "spot" 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 "spot" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
spot is aEnglishnoun. It means: A round or irregular patch on the surface of a thing having a different color, texture etc. and generally round in shape. Pronounced /spɒt/. It ranks #1,377 in English word frequency. Often confused with spy and SPS.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spot |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /spɒt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,377 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spot is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spɒt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,377 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 23 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for spot, with forms such as "sopt", "spott", and "sppot". 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, "spy", "SPS", "SPR", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English spot, spotte, partially from Middle Dutch spotte (“spot, speck”), and partially merging with Middle English splot, from Old English splott (“spot, plot of land”), from Proto-West Germanic *splott, from Proto-Germanic *spluttaz (“segment”… 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 spot, spelled S-P-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A round or irregular patch on the surface of a thing having a different color, texture etc. and generally round in shape.
- 2A stain or disfiguring mark.
- 3A pimple, papule or pustule.
- 4A symbol on a playing card, domino, die, etc. indicating its value; a pip.
- 5A small, unspecified amount or quantity.
- 6A bill of five-dollar or ten-dollar denomination in dollars.
- 7A location or area.
- 8A parking space.
- 9An official determination of placement.
- 10A bright lamp; a spotlight.
- 11A brief advertisement or program segment on television.
- 12A difficult situation.
- 13One who spots (supports or assists a maneuver, or is prepared to assist if safety dictates); a spotter.
- 14Penalty spot.
- 15The act of spotting or noticing something.
- 16A variety of the common domestic pigeon, so called from a spot on its head just above the beak.
- 17A food fish (Leiostomus xanthurus) of the Atlantic coast of the United States, with a black spot behind the shoulders and fifteen oblique dark bars on the sides.
- 18The southern redfish, or red horse (Sciaenops ocellatus), which has a spot on each side at the base of the tail.
- 19Commodities, such as merchandise and cotton, sold for immediate delivery.
- 20An autosoliton.
- 21A decimal point; point.
- 22Any of various points marked on the table, from which balls are played, in snooker, pool, billiards, etc.
- 23Any of the balls marked with spots in the game of pool, which one player aims to pot, the other player taking the stripes.
Etymology
From Middle English spot, spotte, partially from Middle Dutch spotte (“spot, speck”), and partially merging with Middle English splot, from Old English splott (“spot, plot of land”), from Proto-West Germanic *splott, from Proto-Germanic *spluttaz (“segment”), from Proto-Indo-European *splt-no- (“an off-split, segment”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pel- (“to split”). Cognate with North Frisian spot (“speck, piece of ground”), Low German spot (“speck”), Old Norse spotti (“small piece”). See also splot, splotch.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sopt,spott,sppot,spto,sspot
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for spot
Misspelling Variants of "spot"
Frequency rank: #1,377 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: