troll
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "troll", 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 "troll" 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 "troll" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
troll is aEnglishnoun. It means: a giant supernatural being, especially a grotesque humanoid creature living in caves or hills or under bridges. Pronounced /tɹɒl/. Often confused with Troy and trot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | troll |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tɹɒl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #10,784 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for troll is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tɹɒl/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,784 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 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 troll, with forms such as "rtoll", "torll", and "trlol". 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, "Troy", "trot", "truly", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Partly: * from Middle English trol (“demon (?); sorcerer (?)”) [and other forms], from Old Norse trǫll (“conjurer, mage; witch”), from Proto-Germanic *truzlą (“supernatural being; demon, fiend; giant; monster”), probably from *trudaną (“to step on; to tread… 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 troll, spelled T-R-O-L-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1a giant supernatural being, especially a grotesque humanoid creature living in caves or hills or under bridges.
- 2An ugly or unpleasant person.
- 3An optical ejection from the top of the electrically active core region of a thunderstorm that is red in colour and seems to occur after tendrils of vigorous sprites extend downward towards cloudtops.
- 4A Michigander who lives on the mainland, i.e. not a resident of the Upper Peninsula, so named due to living south of the Mackinaw Bridge.
Etymology
Partly: * from Middle English trol (“demon (?); sorcerer (?)”) [and other forms], from Old Norse trǫll (“conjurer, mage; witch”), from Proto-Germanic *truzlą (“supernatural being; demon, fiend; giant; monster”), probably from *trudaną (“to step on; to tread”) + *-ilą (suffix forming agent nouns); and * borrowed from Norwegian Bokmål troll, Swedish troll, or Danish trold, from Old Norse trǫll (see above). Doublet of droll and trow. Cognates * Danish fortrylle (“to bewitch”), trylle (“to conjure”) * Icelandic tröll * Middle High German trol, crewtrolle (“spook, wraith; ogre, monster”) * Norwegian fortrylle (“to bewitch”), trylle (“to conjure”) * Swedish trolla (“to conjure”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: rtoll,torll,trlol,trol,trroll,ttroll
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for troll
Misspelling Variants of "troll"
Frequency rank: #10,784 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: