war
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "war", 3-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 "war" 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 "war" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
war is aEnglishnoun. It means: Organized, large-scale, armed conflict between countries or between national, ethnic, or other sizeable groups, usually but not always involving active engagement of military forces. Pronounced /wɔː/. It ranks #332 in English word frequency. Often confused with we and wi.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | war |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /wɔː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #332 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for war is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wɔː/. Corpus data places it at rank #332 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for war in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "we", "wi", "Wu", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English werre, from Late Old English werre /wyrre (“armed conflict”), from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French guerre /werre (compare modern French guerre), from Medieval Latin werra, from Frankish *werru (“confusion; quarrel”), from Proto-Indo… 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 war, spelled W-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Organized, large-scale, armed conflict between countries or between national, ethnic, or other sizeable groups, usually but not always involving active engagement of military forces.
- 2A particular conflict of this kind.
- 3Protracted armed conflict against irregular forces, particularly groups considered terrorists.
- 4Any protracted conflict, particularly
- 5Any protracted conflict, particularly
- 6Any protracted conflict, particularly
- 7Any protracted conflict, particularly
- 8Any protracted conflict, particularly
- 9An assembly of weapons; instruments of war.
- 10Armed forces.
- 11Any of a family of card games where all cards are dealt at the beginning of play and players attempt to capture them all, typically involving no skill and only serving to kill time.
Etymology
From Middle English werre, from Late Old English werre /wyrre (“armed conflict”), from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French guerre /werre (compare modern French guerre), from Medieval Latin werra, from Frankish *werru (“confusion; quarrel”), from Proto-Indo-European *wers- (“to mix up, confuse, beat, thresh”). Gradually displaced native Old English beadu, hild, ġewinn, orleġe, wīġ, and many others as the general term for "war" during the Middle English period. Related to Old High German werra (“confusion, strife, quarrel”) and German verwirren (“to confuse”), but not to Wehr (“defense”). Also related to Old Saxon werran (“to confuse, perplex”), Dutch war (“confusion, disarray”), West Frisian war (“confusion”), Old English wyrsa, wiersa (“worse”), Old Norse verri (“worse, orig. confounded, mixed up”), Italian guerra (“war”). There may be a connection with worse and wurst.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #332 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: