stake
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "stake", 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 "stake" 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 "stake" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
stake is aEnglishnoun. It means: A piece of wood or other material, usually long and slender, pointed at one end so as to be easily driven into the ground as a marker or a support or stay. Pronounced /steɪk/. It ranks #5,631 in English word frequency. Often confused with stay and star.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stake |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /steɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,631 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stake is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /steɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,631 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 8 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 stake, with forms such as "satke", "sstake", and "staek". 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, "stay", "star", "stan", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English stake, from Old English staca (“pin, tack, stake”), from Proto-West Germanic *stakō, from Proto-Germanic *stakô (“stake”), from Proto-Indo-European *stog-, *steg- (“stake”). Cognate with Scots stak, staik, Saterland Frisian Stak, West Fr… 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 stake, spelled S-T-A-K-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A piece of wood or other material, usually long and slender, pointed at one end so as to be easily driven into the ground as a marker or a support or stay.
- 2A piece of wood driven in the ground, placed in the middle of the court, that is used as the finishing point after scoring 12 hoops in croquet.
- 3A stick or similar object (e.g., steel channel or angle stock) inserted upright in a lop, eye, or mortise, at the side or end of a cart, flat car, flatbed trailer, or the like, to prevent goods from falling off; often connected in a grid forming a stakebody.
- 4The piece of timber to which a person condemned to death was affixed to be burned.
- 5A share or interest in a business or a given situation.
- 6That which is laid down as a wager; that which is staked or hazarded; a pledge.
- 7A small anvil usually furnished with a tang to enter a hole in a bench top, as used by tinsmiths, blacksmiths, etc., for light work, punching hole in or cutting a work piece, or for specific forming techniques etc.
- 8A territorial division comprising all the Mormons (typically several thousand) in a geographical area.
Etymology
From Middle English stake, from Old English staca (“pin, tack, stake”), from Proto-West Germanic *stakō, from Proto-Germanic *stakô (“stake”), from Proto-Indo-European *stog-, *steg- (“stake”). Cognate with Scots stak, staik, Saterland Frisian Stak, West Frisian staak, Dutch staak, Low German Stake, Norwegian stake, Spanish estaca.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: satke,sstake,staek,stakke,stkae,sttake,tsake
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for stake
Misspelling Variants of "stake"
Frequency rank: #5,631 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: