washout
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 "washout", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "washout" 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 "washout" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
washout is aEnglishnoun. It means: An act of washing or cleaning the inside of something. Pronounced /ˈwɒʃaʊt/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | washout |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwɒʃaʊt/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #52,095 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for washout is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈwɒʃaʊt/. Corpus data places it at rank #52,095 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for washout in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.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: Deverbal from wash out. 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 washout, spelled W-A-S-H-O-U-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An act of washing or cleaning the inside of something.
- 2An appliance designed to wash out the inside of something.
- 3The erosion of a relatively soft surface by a sudden gush of water; also, a channel produced by this action.
- 4The erosion of a relatively soft surface by a sudden gush of water; also, a channel produced by this action.
- 5A sporting fixture or other event that cannot be completed because of rain.
- 6An overwhelming victory; a landslide.
- 7A total failure; a disappointment.
- 8An unsuccessful person.
- 9The aerodynamic effect of a small twist in the shape of an aircraft wing.
- 10A destroyed aeroplane.
- 11A trainee who drops out of a training programme.
- 12A period between clinical treatments in which any medication delivered as the first treatment is allowed to be eliminated from a person's body before the second treatment begins.
- 13The cleaning of matter from a physiological system using a fluid; also, the fluid used for such cleaning; or the matter cleaned out from the system.
- 14The action whereby falling rainwater cleans particles from the air.
- 15A place in a mine where ore has been washed away by a flow of water.
Etymology
Deverbal from wash out.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #52,095 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: