transpose
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "transpose", 9-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 "transpose" 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 "transpose" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
transpose is aEnglishverb. It means: To reverse or change the order of (two or more things); to swap or interchange. Pronounced /tɹænsˈpəʊz/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | transpose |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /tɹænsˈpəʊz/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #50,851 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for transpose is 9 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tɹænsˈpəʊz/. Corpus data places it at rank #50,851 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for transpose in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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: From Middle English transposen, from Old French transposer, from Latin trānspositus, perfect passive participle of trānspōnō (“to put across”), from trāns (“across”) + pōnō (“to put”). 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 transpose, spelled T-R-A-N-S-P-O-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To reverse or change the order of (two or more things); to swap or interchange.
- 2To rewrite or perform (a piece) in another key.
- 3To move (a term) from one side of an algebraic equation to the other, reversing the sign of the term.
- 4To rearrange elements in a matrix, by interchanging their respective row and column positional indicators.
- 5To reverse the direction of every edge of (a graph).
- 6To give force to a directive by passing appropriate implementation measures.
- 7To reach a position that may also be obtained from a different move order.
Etymology
From Middle English transposen, from Old French transposer, from Latin trānspositus, perfect passive participle of trānspōnō (“to put across”), from trāns (“across”) + pōnō (“to put”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #50,851 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: