web
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 "web", 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 "web" 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 "web" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
web is aEnglishnoun. It means: The silken structure which a spider builds using silk secreted from the spinnerets at the caudal tip of its abdomen; a spiderweb. Pronounced /wɛb/. It ranks #1,883 in English word frequency. Often confused with wi and Wu.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | web |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /wɛb/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,883 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for web is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wɛb/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,883 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 22 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for web 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, "wi", "Wu", "wo", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *webʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *webaną Proto-Germanic *wabją Old English webb Middle English web English web From Middle English web, webbe, from Old English webb, from Proto-West Germanic *wabi, from Proto-Germanic *wabją (“we… 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 web, spelled W-E-B, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The silken structure which a spider builds using silk secreted from the spinnerets at the caudal tip of its abdomen; a spiderweb.
- 2Any interconnected set of persons, places, or things, which, when diagrammed, resembles a spider's web.
- 3The part of a baseball mitt between the forefinger and thumb, the webbing.
- 4A latticed or woven structure.
- 5A tall tale with more complexity than a myth or legend.
- 6A plot or scheme.
- 7The interconnection between flanges in structural members, increasing the effective lever arm and so the load capacity of the member.
- 8The thinner vertical section of a railway rail between the top (head) and bottom (foot) of the rail.
- 9A fold of tissue connecting the toes of certain birds, or of other animals.
- 10The series of barbs implanted on each side of the shaft of a feather, whether stiff and united together by barbules, as in ordinary feathers, or soft and separate, as in downy feathers.
- 11A continuous strip of material carried by rollers during processing.
- 12A long sheet of paper which is fed from a roll into a printing press, as opposed to individual sheets of paper.
- 13A seventeenth-century unit of Rhenish glass containing 60 bunches.
- 14A band of webbing used to regulate the extension of the hood of a carriage.
- 15A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 16A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 17A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 18A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 19A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 20A major broadcasting network.
- 21A section of a groin vault, separated by ribs.
- 22A cataract of the eye.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *webʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *webaną Proto-Germanic *wabją Old English webb Middle English web English web From Middle English web, webbe, from Old English webb, from Proto-West Germanic *wabi, from Proto-Germanic *wabją (“web”), from Proto-Germanic *webaną (“to weave”), from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”). Cognates Cognate with Scots wab (“web”), North Frisian wääb (“web”), Saterland Frisian Wäb (“web”), West Frisian and Dutch web (“web”), Danish væv (“web”), Faroese vevur (“web”), Icelandic vefur (“web”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk vev (“web”), Swedish väv (“web”); also Cornish goghi (“wasps”), Irish foich, foiche, puch (“wasp”), Welsh gwchi (“drone”), Latin vespa (“wasp”), Ancient Greek ὑφή (huphḗ, “web”), ὑφαίνω (huphaínō, “to weave”) (whence Greek ανυφαίνω (anyfaíno), υφαίνω (yfaíno, “to weave”)), Albanian vej (“to weave”), Latvian lapsene (“wasp”), Lithuanian vapsvà (“wasp”), Old Prussian wobse (“wasp”), Belarusian аса́ (asá, “wasp”), Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, and Ukrainian оса́ (osá, “wasp”), Czech vosa (“wasp”), Polish, Slovak, and Slovene osa (“wasp”), Serbo-Croatian о̀са, òsa (“wasp”), Armenian մոզ (moz, “a kind of fly that bites horses and cattle”), Northern Kurdish moz (“hornet; wasp”), Persian بافتن (bâftan, “to weave”), Tocharian A wäp- (“to weave”), Tocharian B wāp- (“to weave”), Sanskrit उभ्नाति (ubhnāti, “to hurt, kill; to cover; fill”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #1,883 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: