# tie

> English word · Noun · IPA /taɪ/ · frequency rank #2,970

## Definitions
1. A knot; a fastening.
2. A knot of hair, as at the back of a wig.
3. A necktie (item of clothing consisting of a strip of cloth tied around the neck). See also bow tie, black tie.
4. A lace-up shoe.
5. A twist tie, a piece of wire embedded in paper, strip of plastic with ratchets, or similar object which is wound around something and tightened.
6. A connection between people or groups of people, especially a strong connection.
7. A structural member firmly holding two pieces together.
8. A horizontal wooden or concrete structural member that supports and ties together rails.
9. The situation in which two or more participants in a competition are placed equally.
10. The situation at the end of all innings of a match where both sides have the same total of runs (different from a draw).
11. An equalizer, a run, goal, point, etc which causes participants in a competition to be placed equally or have the same score(s).
12. A meeting between two players or teams in a competition.
13. A curved line connecting two notes of the same pitch denoting that they should be played as a single note with the combined length of both notes.
14. A curved line connecting two letters (⁀), used in the IPA to denote a coarticulation, as for example /d͡ʒ/.
15. One or more equal values or sets of equal values in the data set.
16. A bearing and distance between a lot corner or point and a benchmark or iron off site.
17. A connection between two vertices.
18. A tiewig.

## Etymology
From Middle English teye (“cord, chain”), from Old English tēag, tēah (“cord, chain”), from Proto-West Germanic *taugu, from Proto-Germanic *taugō, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dewk-. Compare Danish tov, Icelandic taug.

## Easily confused with
- **to** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-to)
- **TV** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tv)
- **TL** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tl)
- **TX** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tx)
- **Tu** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tu)
- **Ty** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-ty)
- **TN** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tn)
- **TS** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-ts)
- **TM** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tm)
- **TT** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tt)
- **TJ** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tj)
- **tp** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tp)
- **TK** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tk)
- **two** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-two)
- **too** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-too)
- **top** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-top)
- **try** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-try)
- **tom** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tom)
- **tip** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tip)
- **Tim** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/tie-vs-tim)

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/tie