weapon
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "weapon", 6-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 "weapon" 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 "weapon" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
weapon is aEnglishnoun. It means: An instrument of attack or defense in combat or hunting, e.g. most guns, missiles, or swords. Pronounced /ˈwɛp.ən/. It ranks #2,812 in English word frequency. Often confused with Weston and Wesson.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | weapon |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwɛp.ən/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #2,812 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 10 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for weapon is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈwɛp.ən/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,812 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for weapon, with forms such as "ewapon", "waepon", and "weaopn". 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 10 confusable-pair relationships, "Weston", "Wesson", "Weldon", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English wepen, from Old English wǣpn, from Proto-West Germanic *wāpn, from Proto-Germanic *wēpną (“weapon”), of unknown origin, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *wēbnom. Cognates Cognate with Scots weepon (“weapon”), North Frisian woopen (“weap… 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 weapon, spelled W-E-A-P-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An instrument of attack or defense in combat or hunting, e.g. most guns, missiles, or swords.
- 2An instrument or other means of harming or exerting control over another.
- 3A tool of any kind.
- 4An idiot, an oaf, a fool, a tool; a contemptible or incompetent person.
- 5A very skilled, competent, or capable person or thing worthy of awe.
- 6The human genitals.
Etymology
From Middle English wepen, from Old English wǣpn, from Proto-West Germanic *wāpn, from Proto-Germanic *wēpną (“weapon”), of unknown origin, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *wēbnom. Cognates Cognate with Scots weepon (“weapon”), North Frisian woopen (“weapon”), Saterland Frisian Woapen (“weapon”), West Frisian wapen (“weapon; coat of arms”), Alemannic German Waaffe (“tool”), Dutch wapen (“weapon”), German Waffe (“weapon”) and Wappen (“coat of arms”), Luxembourgish Waff (“weapon”), Yiddish וואָפֿן (vofn, “weapon”), Danish våben (“weapon; coat of arms”), Faroese vákn, vápn (“weapon; whaling lance”), Icelandic vopn (“weapon”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk våpen (“weapon”), Swedish vapen (“weapon; coat of arms”), Gothic 𐍅𐌴𐍀𐌽 (wēpn, “weapon”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ewapon,waepon,weaopn,weapno,weaponn,weappon,wepaon,wweapon
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for weapon
Misspelling Variants of "weapon"
Frequency rank: #2,812 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: