start
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 "start", 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 "start" 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 "start" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
start is aEnglishnoun. It means: The beginning of an activity. Pronounced /stɑːt/. It ranks #248 in English word frequency. Often confused with STR and stay.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | start |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stɑːt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #248 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for start is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stɑːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #248 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.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 start, with forms such as "satrt", "sstart", and "starrt". 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, "STR", "stay", "stir", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English stert, from the verb sterten (“to start, startle”). See below. 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 start, spelled S-T-A-R-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The beginning of an activity.
- 2A sudden involuntary movement.
- 3The beginning point of a race, a board game, etc.
- 4An appearance in a sports game, horserace, etc., from the beginning of the event.
- 5A young plant germinated in a pot to be transplanted later.
- 6An initial advantage over somebody else; a head start.
- 7A happening or proceeding.
- 8Alternative letter-case form of Start (“a typical button for video games, originally used to start a game, now also often to pause or choose an option”)
Etymology
From Middle English stert, from the verb sterten (“to start, startle”). See below.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: satrt,sstart,starrt,startt,statr,sttart,tsart
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for start
Misspelling Variants of "start"
Frequency rank: #248 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: