sweater
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sweater", 7-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 "sweater" 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 "sweater" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sweater is aEnglishnoun. It means: A knitted jacket or jersey, usually of thick wool, worn by athletes before or after exercise. Pronounced /ˈswɛtə/. It ranks #9,967 in English word frequency. Often confused with sweaty and sweats.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sweater |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈswɛtə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #9,967 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sweater is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈswɛtə/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,967 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 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for sweater, with forms such as "sewater", "ssweater", and "swaeter". 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, "sweaty", "sweats", "sweeper", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English swētere, equivalent to sweat + -er. 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 sweater, spelled S-W-E-A-T-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A knitted jacket or jersey, usually of thick wool, worn by athletes before or after exercise.
- 2A similar garment worn for warmth.
- 3One who sweats (produces sweat).
- 4One who or that which causes to sweat.
- 5A diaphoretic remedy.
- 6An exploitative middleman who subcontracted piece work in the tailoring trade.
- 7One who sweats coins, i.e. removes small portions by shaking them.
- 8A London street ruffian in Queen Anne's time who prodded passers-by with his sword-point.
Etymology
From Middle English swētere, equivalent to sweat + -er.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sewater,ssweater,swaeter,sweaetr,sweaterr,sweatre,sweatter,swetaer,swweater,wseater
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sweater
Misspelling Variants of "sweater"
Frequency rank: #9,967 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: