symbol
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "symbol", 6-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 "symbol" 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 "symbol" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
symbol is aEnglishnoun. It means: A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object. Pronounced /ˈsɪmbəl/. It ranks #4,274 in English word frequency. Often confused with symbols and symbolic.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | symbol |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɪmbəl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #4,274 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for symbol is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɪmbəl/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,274 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 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 symbol, with forms such as "smybol", "ssymbol", and "sybmol". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "symbols", "symbolic", "Sybil", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French symbole, from Latin symbolus, symbolum (“a sign, mark, token, symbol, in Late Latin also a creed”), from Ancient Greek σύμβολον (súmbolon, “a sign by which one infers something; a mark, token, badge, ticket, tally, check, a signal, watchword, ou… 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 symbol, spelled S-Y-M-B-O-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.
- 2A thing considered the embodiment or cardinal exemplar of a concept, theme, or other thing.
- 3A type of noun whereby the form refers to the same entity independently of the context; a symbol arbitrarily denotes a referent. See also icon and index.
- 4A summary of a dogmatic statement of faith.
- 5The numerical expression which defines a plane's position relative to the assumed axes.
- 6That which is thrown into a common fund; hence, an appointed or accustomed duty.
- 7Share; allotment.
- 8An internal identifier used by a debugger to relate parts of the compiled program to the corresponding names in the source code.
- 9A signalling event on a communications channel; a signal that cannot be further divided into meaningful information.
Etymology
From French symbole, from Latin symbolus, symbolum (“a sign, mark, token, symbol, in Late Latin also a creed”), from Ancient Greek σύμβολον (súmbolon, “a sign by which one infers something; a mark, token, badge, ticket, tally, check, a signal, watchword, outward sign”), from συμβάλλω (sumbállō, “to throw together, dash together, compare, correspond, tally, come to a conclusion”), from σύν (sún, “with, together”) + βάλλω (bállō, “to throw, put”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: smybol,ssymbol,sybmol,symbbol,symblo,symboll,symmbol,symobl,syymbol,ysmbol
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for symbol
Misspelling Variants of "symbol"
Frequency rank: #4,274 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: