thumb
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "thumb", 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 "thumb" 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 "thumb" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
thumb is aEnglishnoun. It means: The shortest and thickest digit of the hand that for humans has the most mobility and can be made to oppose (moved to touch) all of the other fingers. Pronounced /θʌm/. It ranks #7,071 in English word frequency. Often confused with tub and tum.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | thumb |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /θʌm/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,071 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 17 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for thumb is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /θʌm/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,071 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for thumb, with forms such as "htumb", "thhumb", and "thmub". 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 17 confusable-pair relationships, "tub", "tum", "thus", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Derived from Middle English thombe, thoume, thoumbe (“thumb”), from Old English þūma (“thumb”), from Proto-West Germanic *þūmō (“thumb”), from Proto-Germanic *þūmô (“thumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *tūm- (“to grow”). Cognate with West Frisian tomme (“thum… 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 thumb, spelled T-H-U-M-B, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The shortest and thickest digit of the hand that for humans has the most mobility and can be made to oppose (moved to touch) all of the other fingers.
- 2The part of a slider that may be moved linearly along the slider.
- 3A thumbnail picture.
- 4A top hatch plate for covering an excavator bucket, used to keep material in the digger bucket after scooping it up, and not letting it spill out.
Etymology
Derived from Middle English thombe, thoume, thoumbe (“thumb”), from Old English þūma (“thumb”), from Proto-West Germanic *þūmō (“thumb”), from Proto-Germanic *þūmô (“thumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *tūm- (“to grow”). Cognate with West Frisian tomme (“thumb”), Dutch duim (“thumb”), Low German Duum (“thumb”), German Daumen (“thumb”), Danish and Norwegian tomme (“inch”), Norn tum (“thumb”), Swedish tumme (“thumb”), tum (“inch”), Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos, “burial mound”). Also compare Welsh tyfu (“to grow”), Latin tumēre (“to swell”), Lithuanian tumėti (“to thicken, clot”), Avestan 𐬀𐬨𐬏𐬙 (amūt, “strong”), Sanskrit तुम्र (túmra, “strong, thick”). The parasitic ‐b has existed since the late 13th century. Doublet of tomb.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: htumb,thhumb,thmub,thubm,thumbb,thummb,tthumb,tuhmb
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for thumb
Misspelling Variants of "thumb"
Frequency rank: #7,071 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: