stalk
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "stalk", 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 "stalk" 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 "stalk" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
stalk is aEnglishnoun. It means: The stem or main axis of a plant. Pronounced /stɔːk/. Often confused with stay and star.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stalk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stɔːk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #15,919 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stalk is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stɔːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,919 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for stalk, with forms such as "satlk", "sstalk", and "stakl". 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 stalke, stelke, stalk, perhaps from Old English *stealc, *stielc, *stealuc, from Proto-West Germanic *staluk, *stalik, from Proto-Germanic *stalukaz, *stalikaz, diminutive of Proto-Germanic *stalô, *staluz (“support, stem, stalk”), from … 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 stalk, spelled S-T-A-L-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The stem or main axis of a plant.
- 2The petiole, pedicel, or peduncle of a plant.
- 3Something resembling the stalk of a plant, such as the stem of a quill.
- 4An ornament in the Corinthian capital resembling the stalk of a plant, from which the volutes and helices spring.
- 5One of the two upright pieces of a ladder.
- 6A stem or peduncle, as in certain barnacles and crinoids.
- 7The narrow basal portion of the abdomen of a hymenopterous insect.
- 8The peduncle of the eyes of decapod crustaceans.
- 9An iron bar with projections inserted in a core to strengthen it; a core arbor.
- 10Informally, a construction which generalizes that of the notion of the ring of germs of functions near a point to the context of arbitrary sheaves. Formally, given a sheaf ℱ on a space X, and a point x in X, the direct limit of the sections of F on the open neighborhoods of x ordered by reverse inclusion. See Stalk (sheaf) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- 11The penis.
Etymology
From Middle English stalke, stelke, stalk, perhaps from Old English *stealc, *stielc, *stealuc, from Proto-West Germanic *staluk, *stalik, from Proto-Germanic *stalukaz, *stalikaz, diminutive of Proto-Germanic *stalô, *staluz (“support, stem, stalk”), from Proto-Indo-European *stel- (“to place, stand; be stiff; stud, post, trunk, stake, stem, stalk”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch staal (“sample”), steel (“stem”), German Stiel (“stalk”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål stilk (“stalk, stem”), Faroese stjølur (“bottom part of a sheaf”), Icelandic stilkur (“stalk, stem”), Norwegian Nynorsk stilk, stylk (“stalk, stem”), styl (“lower part of a straw”), Swedish stjälk (“stalk, stem”), Albanian shtalkë (“crossbeam, board used as a door hinge”), Welsh telm (“frond”), Ancient Greek στειλειή (steileiḗ, “beam”), Old Armenian ստեղն (stełn, “trunk, stalk”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: satlk,sstalk,stakl,stalkk,stallk,stlak,sttalk,tsalk
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for stalk
Misspelling Variants of "stalk"
Frequency rank: #15,919 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "stalk"?
What does "stalk" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "stalk"?
How do you pronounce "stalk"?
What is the origin of the word "stalk"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: