wednesday
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
9 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "wednesday", 9-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 "wednesday" 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 "wednesday" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
Wednesday is aEnglishnoun. It means: The fourth day of the week in many religious traditions, and the third day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 norm; it follows Tuesday and precedes Thursday. Pronounced /ˈwɛnz.deɪ/. It ranks #2,566 in English word frequency. Often confused with Wednesdays.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Wednesday |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwɛnz.deɪ/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #2,566 |
| Misspellings tracked | 14 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Wednesday is 9 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈwɛnz.deɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,566 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "The fourth day of the week in many religious traditions, and the third day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 norm; it follows Tuesday and precedes Thursday.".
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 14 documented wrong-spelling variants for Wednesday, with forms such as "ewdnesday", "wdenesday", and "weddnesday". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "Wednesdays", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English Wednesday, from unattested Old English *wēdnesdæġ (“Wednesday”), synchronically an i-mutated form of attested wōdnesdæġ (itself from Proto-West Germanic *Wōdanas dag, its reflex Middle English Wodnesdei falling into disuse), from Proto-W… 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 Wednesday, spelled W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The fourth day of the week in many religious traditions, and the third day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 norm; it follows Tuesday and precedes Thursday.
Etymology
From Middle English Wednesday, from unattested Old English *wēdnesdæġ (“Wednesday”), synchronically an i-mutated form of attested wōdnesdæġ (itself from Proto-West Germanic *Wōdanas dag, its reflex Middle English Wodnesdei falling into disuse), from Proto-West Germanic *Wōdinas dag also attested in Old Frisian wednesdei and Middle Dutch wenesdach. In any case, a calque (interpretātiō germānica) of Latin diēs Mercuriī (“day of Mercury”) and Koine Ancient Greek ἡμέρα (hēméra, “day”) Ἑρμοῦ (Hermoû, “of Hermes”), via an association of the god Odin (“Woden”) with Mercury and Hermes. See also Japanese 水曜日 (“Mercury's day”). Cognates Cognate with Scots Wadensday (“Wednesday”), Yola Wennesdei (“Wednesday”), West Frisian woansdei (“Wednesday”), Afrikaans Woensdag (“Wednesday”), Central Franconian Jodesdaach (“Wednesday”), Dutch, West Flemish woensdag (“Wednesday”), Dutch Low Saxon woensdag, woonsdag, wonsdag (“Wednesday”), German Wodenstag, Wotanstag (“Wednesday”), Low German Goonsdag, Woonsdag (“Wednesday”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Swedish onsdag (“Wednesday”), Faroese ónsdagur (“Wednesday”), Icelandic óðinsdagur (“Wednesday”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ewdnesday,wdenesday,weddnesday,wedensday,wednedsay,wednesady,wednesdayy,wednesdday,wednesdya,wednessday,wednnesday,wednseday,wendesday,wwednesday
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for Wednesday
Misspelling Variants of "Wednesday"
Frequency rank: #2,566 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "Wednesday"?
What does "Wednesday" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "Wednesday"?
How do you pronounce "Wednesday"?
What is the origin of the word "Wednesday"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: