warlock
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "warlock", 7-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 "warlock" 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 "warlock" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
warlock is aEnglishnoun. It means: A male magic-user; a male witch; a wizard. Pronounced /ˈwɔː.lɒk/. Often confused with Warwick and warlord.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | warlock |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwɔː.lɒk/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #29,515 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for warlock is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈwɔː.lɒk/. Corpus data places it at rank #29,515 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for warlock, with forms such as "awrlock", "walrock", and "warlcok". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "Warwick", "warlord", "wedlock", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English warloghe, warlowe, warloȝe, from Old English wǣrloga (“traitor, deceiver”, literally “truce-breaker”), from Proto-West Germanic *wārulogō (“liar”), equivalent to Old English wǣr (“covenant, truce, pact, promise”) (from Proto-Indo-Europea… 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 warlock, spelled W-A-R-L-O-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A male magic-user; a male witch; a wizard.
- 2A magic-user (regardless of gender).
Etymology
From Middle English warloghe, warlowe, warloȝe, from Old English wǣrloga (“traitor, deceiver”, literally “truce-breaker”), from Proto-West Germanic *wārulogō (“liar”), equivalent to Old English wǣr (“covenant, truce, pact, promise”) (from Proto-Indo-European *weh₁- (“true”); whence also Latin vērus) + loga (“liar”), from Proto-Germanic *lugô, related to Old English lēogan (whence English lie). The hard -ck ending originated in Scottish and Northern English, like the sense "male magic-user" (from the notion that such men were in league with the Devil and had thus broken their baptismal vows / betrayed Christianity). Cognate with Old Saxon wārlogo (“liar, unfaithful or insidious one”). A few writers alternatively propose a derivation from Old Norse varðlokkur (“incantations, charms”, literally “ward songs”), but as the OED notes, this is implausible due to the extreme rarity of the Norse word, the semantic difference, and because forms without hard -k, which are consistent with the Old English etymology (“traitor”), are attested earlier than forms with -k, and forms with -ð- are not attested.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: awrlock,walrock,warlcok,warllock,warlocck,warlockk,warlokc,warolck,warrlock,wralock,wwarlock
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for warlock
Misspelling Variants of "warlock"
Frequency rank: #29,515 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: