term
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "term", 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 "term" 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 "term" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
term is aEnglishnoun. It means: That which limits the extent of anything; limit, extremity, bound, boundary, terminus. Pronounced /tɜːm/. It ranks #600 in English word frequency. Often confused with TM and try.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | term |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tɜːm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #600 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for term is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tɜːm/. Corpus data places it at rank #600 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 19 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 term, with forms such as "etrm", "temr", and "termm". 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", "try", "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 terme, borrowed from Old French terme, from Latin terminus (“a bound, boundary, limit, end; in Medieval Latin, also a time, period, word, covenant, etc.”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *térmn̥ (“stump, end, boundary”). Doublet of … 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 term, spelled T-E-R-M, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1That which limits the extent of anything; limit, extremity, bound, boundary, terminus.
- 2A chronological limitation or restriction, a limited timespan.
- 3Any of the binding conditions or promises in a legal contract.
- 4Specifically, the conditions in a legal contract that specify the price and also how and when payment must be made.
- 5A point, line, or superficies that limits.
- 6A word or phrase (e.g., noun phrase, verb phrase, open compound), especially one from a specialised area of knowledge; a name for a concept.
- 7Relations among people.
- 8Part of a year, especially one of the divisions of an academic year.
- 9Duration of officeholding, or its limit; period in office of fixed length.
- 10Duration of officeholding, or its limit; period in office of fixed length.
- 11Duration of officeholding, or its limit; period in office of fixed length.
- 12With respect to a pregnancy, the usual duration of gestation for the given species (for example, nine months in humans); (metonymic) the end of this duration: the timepoint at which birth usually happens (for example, in humans, approximately 40 weeks from conception), defining the due date.
- 13The maximum period during which the patent can be maintained into force.
- 14A menstrual period.
- 15Any value (variable or constant) or expression separated from another term by a space or an appropriate character, in an overall expression or table.
- 16The subject or the predicate of a proposition; one of the three component parts of a syllogism, each one of which is used twice.
- 17An essential dignity in which unequal segments of every astrological sign have internal rulerships which affect the power and integrity of each planet in a natal chart.
- 18A statue of the upper body, sometimes without the arms, ending in a pillar or pedestal.
- 19A piece of carved work placed under each end of the taffrail.
Etymology
From Middle English terme, borrowed from Old French terme, from Latin terminus (“a bound, boundary, limit, end; in Medieval Latin, also a time, period, word, covenant, etc.”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *térmn̥ (“stump, end, boundary”). Doublet of terminus and termon. Old English had termen, from the same source.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: etrm,temr,termm,terrm,trem,tterm
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for term
Misspelling Variants of "term"
Frequency rank: #600 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: