teach
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 "teach", 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 "teach" 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 "teach" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
teach is aEnglishverb. It means: To pass on knowledge to. Pronounced /tiːt͡ʃ/. It ranks #2,183 in English word frequency. Often confused with teh and TEC.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | teach |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /tiːt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,183 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for teach is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tiːt͡ʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,183 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 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 teach, with forms such as "etach", "taech", and "teacch". 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, "teh", "TEC", "team", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English techen, from Old English tǣċan (“to show, declare, demonstrate; teach, instruct, train; assign, prescribe, direct; warn; persuade”), from Proto-West Germanic *taikijan, from Proto-Germanic *taikijaną (“to show”), from Proto-Indo-European… 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 teach, spelled T-E-A-C-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To pass on knowledge to.
- 2To pass on knowledge generally, especially as one's profession; to act as a teacher.
- 3To cause (someone) to learn or understand (something).
- 4To cause to know the disagreeable consequences of some action.
- 5To show (someone) the way; to guide, conduct; to point, indicate.
Etymology
From Middle English techen, from Old English tǣċan (“to show, declare, demonstrate; teach, instruct, train; assign, prescribe, direct; warn; persuade”), from Proto-West Germanic *taikijan, from Proto-Germanic *taikijaną (“to show”), from Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ- (“to show”). Cognate with Scots tech, teich (“to teach”), German zeigen (“to show, point out”), zeihen (“accuse, blame”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍄𐌴𐌹𐌷𐌰𐌽 (gateihan, “to announce, declare, tell, show, display”), Latin dīcō (“speak, say, tell”), Ancient Greek δείκνυμι (deíknumi, “show, point out, explain, teach”), Sanskrit दिशति (diśati, “to point out, show, tell, teach”). More at token.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: etach,taech,teacch,teachh,teahc,tecah,tteach
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for teach
Misspelling Variants of "teach"
Frequency rank: #2,183 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: