team
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 "team", 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 "team" 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 "team" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
team is aEnglishnoun. It means: A set of draught animals, such as two horses in front of a carriage. Pronounced /tiːm/. It ranks #203 in English word frequency. Often confused with TM and ten.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | team |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tiːm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #203 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for team is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tiːm/. Corpus data places it at rank #203 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for team, with forms such as "etam", "taem", and "teamm". 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, "TM", "ten", "tom", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English tem, teem, teme, from Old English tēam (“child-bearing, offspring, brood, set of draught animals”), from Proto-West Germanic *taum, from Proto-Germanic *taumaz (“that which draws or pulls”), from Proto-Germanic *taugijaną, *tugōną, *teuh… 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 team, spelled T-E-A-M, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A set of draught animals, such as two horses in front of a carriage.
- 2Any group of people involved in the same activity, especially sports or work.
- 3A group of animals moving together, especially young ducks.
- 4A royalty or privilege granted by royal charter to a lord of a manor, of having, keeping, and judging in his court, his bondmen, neifes, and villains, and their offspring, or suit, that is, goods and chattels, and appurtenances thereto.
- 5A group of people who favor one side of a binary debate that is divided and lacks a well-established clear consensus.
Etymology
From Middle English tem, teem, teme, from Old English tēam (“child-bearing, offspring, brood, set of draught animals”), from Proto-West Germanic *taum, from Proto-Germanic *taumaz (“that which draws or pulls”), from Proto-Germanic *taugijaną, *tugōną, *teuhōną, *teuhaną (“to lead, bring, pull, draw”), from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to pull, lead”). Cognate with Scots team, teem (“a chain, harness”), Saterland Frisian Toom (“bridle; breeding”), West Frisian team (“bridle, team”), Dutch toom (“bridle, reins, flock of birds”), German Low German Toom (“bridle”), German Zaum (“bridle”), Norwegian tømme (“bridle, rein”), Swedish töm (“leash, rein”). More at teem, tie, tow.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: etam,taem,teamm,tema,tteam
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for team
Misspelling Variants of "team"
Frequency rank: #203 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: