talk
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "talk", 4-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 "talk" 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 "talk" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
talk is aEnglishverb. It means: To communicate, usually by means of speech. Pronounced /tɔːk/. It ranks #368 in English word frequency. Often confused with TL and TK.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | talk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /tɔːk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #368 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for talk is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tɔːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #368 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for talk, with forms such as "atlk", "takl", and "talkk". 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, "TL", "TK", "tax", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English talken, talkien, from Old English *tealcian (“to talk, chat”), from Proto-West Germanic *talkōn, from Proto-Germanic *talkōną (“to talk, chatter”), frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *talōną (“to count, recount, tell”), from Proto-Indo… 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 talk, spelled T-A-L-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To communicate, usually by means of speech.
- 2To discuss; to talk about.
- 3To speak (a certain language).
- 4Used to emphasise the importance, size, complexity etc. of the thing mentioned.
- 5To confess, especially implicating others.
- 6To criticize someone for something of which one is guilty oneself.
- 7To gossip; to create scandal.
- 8To manifest outwardly in speech, as opposed to reality or action.
- 9To influence someone to express something, especially a particular stance or viewpoint or in a particular manner.
Etymology
From Middle English talken, talkien, from Old English *tealcian (“to talk, chat”), from Proto-West Germanic *talkōn, from Proto-Germanic *talkōną (“to talk, chatter”), frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *talōną (“to count, recount, tell”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol-, *del- (“to aim, calculate, adjust, count”), equivalent to tell + -k. Cognate with Scots talk (“to talk”), Low German taalken (“to talk”). Related also to Danish tale (“to talk, speak”), Swedish tala (“to talk, speak, say, chatter”), Icelandic tala (“to talk”), Norwegian tale (“speech”), Old English talian (“to count, calculate, reckon, account, consider, think, esteem, value; argue; tell, relate; impute, assign”). More at tale. Despite the surface similarity, unrelated to Proto-Indo-European *telkʷ- (“to talk”) (due to Grimm's law), which is the source of loquacious.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: atlk,takl,talkk,tallk,tlak,ttalk
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for talk
Misspelling Variants of "talk"
Frequency rank: #368 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: