spread
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "spread", 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 "spread" 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 "spread" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
spread is aEnglishverb. It means: To stretch out, open out (a material etc.) so that it more fully covers a given area of space. Pronounced /spɹɛd/. It ranks #1,650 in English word frequency. Often confused with spree and stead.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spread |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /spɹɛd/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,650 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 16 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spread is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spɹɛd/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,650 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for spread, with forms such as "psread", "sperad", and "sppread". 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 16 confusable-pair relationships, "spree", "stead", "stream", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English spreden, from Old English sprǣdan (“to spread, expand”), from Proto-Germanic *spraidijaną (“to spread”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)per- (“to strew, sow, sprinkle”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian spreede (“to spread”), West Frisian sp… 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 spread, spelled S-P-R-E-A-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To stretch out, open out (a material etc.) so that it more fully covers a given area of space.
- 2To extend (individual rays, limbs etc.); to stretch out in varying or opposing directions. simple past and past participle of spread
- 3To disperse, to scatter or distribute over a given area.
- 4To proliferate; to become more widely present, to be disseminated.
- 5To disseminate; to cause to proliferate, to make (something) widely known or present.
- 6To take up a larger area or space; to expand, be extended.
- 7To smear, to distribute in a thin layer.
- 8To cover (something) with a thin layer of some substance, as of butter.
- 9To prepare; to set and furnish with provisions.
- 10To open one’s legs, especially for sexual favours.
Etymology
From Middle English spreden, from Old English sprǣdan (“to spread, expand”), from Proto-Germanic *spraidijaną (“to spread”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)per- (“to strew, sow, sprinkle”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian spreede (“to spread”), West Frisian spriede (“to spread”), North Frisian spriedjen (“to spread”), Dutch spreiden (“to spread”), Low German spreden (“to spread”), German spreiten (“to spread, spread out”), Danish sprede (“to spread”), Norwegian spre, spreie (“to spread, disseminate”), Swedish sprida (“to spread”), Latin spernō, spargō, Ancient Greek σπείρω (speírō), Persian سپردن (sepordan, “to deposit”), English spurn.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: psread,sperad,sppread,spraed,spreadd,spreda,sprread,srpead,sspread
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for spread
Misspelling Variants of "spread"
Frequency rank: #1,650 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: