west
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "west", 4-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 "west" 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 "west" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
west is aEnglishnoun. It means: The direction opposite to that of the earth's rotation, specifically 270°. Pronounced /wɛst/. It ranks #521 in English word frequency. Often confused with wt and WS.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | west |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /wɛst/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #521 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for west is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wɛst/. Corpus data places it at rank #521 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for west, with forms such as "ewst", "wesst", and "westt". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "wt", "WS", "wet", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: PIE word *wek(ʷ)speros From Middle English west, from Old English west, from Proto-West Germanic *westr (“western”), from Proto-Germanic *westrą (“west”), from Proto-Germanic *westraz (“west”), from Proto-Indo-European *wek(ʷ)speros (“evening”). Cognates C… 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 west, spelled W-E-S-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The direction opposite to that of the earth's rotation, specifically 270°.
- 2The western region or area; the inhabitants thereof.
- 3In a church: the direction of the gallery, opposite to the altar, and opposite to the direction faced by the priest when celebrating ad orientem.
Etymology
PIE word *wek(ʷ)speros From Middle English west, from Old English west, from Proto-West Germanic *westr (“western”), from Proto-Germanic *westrą (“west”), from Proto-Germanic *westraz (“west”), from Proto-Indo-European *wek(ʷ)speros (“evening”). Cognates Cognate with Scots wast (“west”), North Frisian waast, weest, wäst (“west”), Saterland Frisian Wääste (“west”), West Frisian, Dutch west (“west”), German West (“west”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk vest (“west”), Faroese, Icelandic vestur (“west”), Swedish väst, väster (“west”); also with Irish feascar, feasgar (“evening; vespers”), Cornish gorthugher (“evening”), Manx fastyr (“afternoon, evening; vespers”), Scottish Gaelic feasgar (“afternoon, evening”), Latin vesper (“evening”), Ancient Greek ἕσπερος (hésperos, “evening; western”), Latvian vakars (“evening”), Lithuanian vakaras (“evening”), Czech, Slovak and Slovene večer (“evening”), Kashubian wieczór (“evening”), Polish wieczerz, wieczór (“evening”), Russian вечер (večer, “evening”), Serbo-Croatian вече, вечер, veče, večer (“evening”), Armenian գիշեր (gišer, “night”). Compare also Catalan oest (“west”), French ouest (“west”), Galician oeste, ueste (“west”), Italian ovest (“west”), Portuguese, Spanish oeste (“west”) (all ultimately borrowings of the Old English word).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ewst,wesst,westt,wets,wset,wwest
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for west
Misspelling Variants of "west"
Frequency rank: #521 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: