state
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 "state", 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 "state" 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 "state" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
state is aEnglishnoun. It means: A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time. Pronounced /steɪt/. It ranks #163 in English word frequency. Often confused with stay and SWAT.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | state |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /steɪt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #163 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for state is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /steɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #163 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 20 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 state, with forms such as "satte", "sstate", and "staet". 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", "SWAT", "style", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- Proto-Italic *status Latin statuslbor. Old French estatbor. Middle English stat English state From Middle English stat (as a noun); adopted c. 1200 from both Old French estat and Latin stātus (“manner of standing, … 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 state, spelled S-T-A-T-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 2A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 3A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 4A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 5A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 6A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 7A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 8A condition; a set of circumstances applying at any given time.
- 9High social standing or circumstance.
- 10High social standing or circumstance.
- 11High social standing or circumstance.
- 12High social standing or circumstance.
- 13High social standing or circumstance.
- 14High social standing or circumstance.
- 15A polity or community.
- 16A polity or community.
- 17A polity or community.
- 18A polity or community.
- 19An element of the range of the random variables that define a random process.
- 20The lexical aspect (aktionsart) of verbs or predicates that do not change over time.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- Proto-Italic *status Latin statuslbor. Old French estatbor. Middle English stat English state From Middle English stat (as a noun); adopted c. 1200 from both Old French estat and Latin stātus (“manner of standing, attitude, position, carriage, manner, dress, apparel; and other senses”), from stāre (“to stand”). Doublet of estate and status. The sense of "polity" develops in the 14th century. Compare French être, Greek στέω (stéo), Italian stare, Portuguese estar, Romanian sta, and Spanish estar. The verb is first attested around the beginning of the 16th century. Related to English stand.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: satte,sstate,staet,statte,sttae,sttate,tsate
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for state
Misspelling Variants of "state"
Frequency rank: #163 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: