tempura
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Detailed reference entry for the English word "tempura", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "tempura" 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 "tempura" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
The verdict
“tempura” is an uncommon English word, ranked #53,907 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #53,907
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: A Japanese dish made by deep-frying vegetables, seafood, or other foods in a light batter.
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See how tempura compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tempura |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈtɛmpʊɹə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #53,907 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tempura” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for tempura is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈtɛmpʊɹə/. Corpus data places it at rank #53,907 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A Japanese dish made by deep-frying vegetables, seafood, or other foods in a light batter.".
No misspelling variants are generated for tempura in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Japanese 天(てん)麩(ぷ)羅(ら) (tenpura), from Portuguese, ultimately from Latin. Different dictionaries link two different original terms: * Portuguese tempero (“seasoning”) or tempera (“he/she/it seasons; season!”), third-person present singular or … 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 tempura, spelled T-E-M-P-U-R-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A Japanese dish made by deep-frying vegetables, seafood, or other foods in a light batter.
Etymology
Borrowed from Japanese 天(てん)麩(ぷ)羅(ら) (tenpura), from Portuguese, ultimately from Latin. Different dictionaries link two different original terms: * Portuguese tempero (“seasoning”) or tempera (“he/she/it seasons; season!”), third-person present singular or imperative tense of temperar (“to season, to temper”), from Latin temperare (“to mix, to temper”). * Portuguese têmpora (“Ember days”), from Latin tempora, plural of tempus (“time; period”). When Portuguese explorers (mostly Jesuit missionaries) arrived in Japan, they abstained from eating beef, pork, and poultry during the Ember days, a Catholic series of holidays. Instead, they ate fried vegetables and fish. This was the first contact of the Japanese with fried food, and since then they began associating the Portuguese word têmpora (which they pronounced tenpura) with such food.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #53,907 in English
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Using “tempura”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-E-M-P-U-R-A — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈtɛmpʊɹə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: