what
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 "what", 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 "what" 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 "what" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
what is aEnglishdet. It means: Which, especially which of an open-ended set of possibilities. Pronounced /wɒt/. It ranks #46 in English word frequency. Often confused with wt and who.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | what |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Det |
| IPA | /wɒt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #46 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for what is 4 letters long, classified as adet, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wɒt/. Corpus data places it at rank #46 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 5 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 what, with forms such as "hwat", "waht", and "whatt". 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", "who", "why", 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 *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwat Proto-West Germanic *hwat Old English hwæt Middle English what English what From Middle English what, from Old English hwæt (“what”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwat, from… 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 what, spelled W-H-A-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Which, especially which of an open-ended set of possibilities.
- 2Which.
- 3Any ... that; all ... that; whatever.
- 4Emphasises that something is noteworthy or remarkable in quality or degree, in either a good or bad way; may be used in combination with certain other determiners, especially 'a', less often 'some'.
- 5Emphasises that something is noteworthy or remarkable in quality or degree, in either a good or bad way; may be used in combination with certain other determiners, especially 'a', less often 'some'.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwat Proto-West Germanic *hwat Old English hwæt Middle English what English what From Middle English what, from Old English hwæt (“what”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwat, from Proto-Germanic *hwat (“what”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷód (“what”), neuter form of *kʷós (“who”). Cognate with Scots what, whit (“what”), North Frisian wat (“what”), Saterland Frisian wat (“what”), West Frisian wat (“what”), Dutch wat (“what”), Low German wat (“what”), German was (“what”), Danish hvad (“what”), Norwegian Bokmål hva (“what”), Swedish vad (“what”), Norwegian Nynorsk kva (“what”), Icelandic hvað (“what”), Latin quod (“what, which”). Its use as a particle of contradiction or objection in colloquial Singaporean and Malaysian English is analogous to Cantonese 喎 /㖞 (wo³, etymology 2, sense 3). It is possible that this was historically reinforced by the dated use of what as a sentence-final question tag in British English.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hwat,waht,whatt,whhat,whta,wwhat
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for what
Misspelling Variants of "what"
Frequency rank: #46 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: