whore
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "whore", 5-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 "whore" 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 "whore" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
whore is aEnglishnoun. It means: Synonym of prostitute: a person (especially a woman) who offers sexual services for payment. Pronounced /hɔː/. It ranks #8,877 in English word frequency. Often confused with woe and wor.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | whore |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɔː/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #8,877 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for whore is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɔː/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,877 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for whore, with forms such as "hwore", "whhore", and "whoer". 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, "woe", "wor", "work", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hore, from Old English hōre, from Proto-Germanic *hōrǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ros (“loved”), from *keh₂- (“to wish; desire”). Cognate with Dutch hoer, German Hure, Old Norse hóra as well as Sanskrit चारु (cā́ru, “dear”), Latin cā… 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 whore, spelled W-H-O-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Synonym of prostitute: a person (especially a woman) who offers sexual services for payment.
- 2A person who is sexually promiscuous; a slut.
- 3A person who is unscrupulous, especially one who compromises their principles for gain.
- 4A person who will violate behavioral standards to achieve something desired.
- 5A contemptible person.
Etymology
From Middle English hore, from Old English hōre, from Proto-Germanic *hōrǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ros (“loved”), from *keh₂- (“to wish; desire”). Cognate with Dutch hoer, German Hure, Old Norse hóra as well as Sanskrit चारु (cā́ru, “dear”), Latin cārus (“dear, expensive”), and Irish cara (“friend”). The unetymological spelling with wh- superficially denotes a formerly standard pronunciation with an excrescent /w/ (such as in whole), but such a form is hardly found in either commentators on Early Modern English pronunciations or records of traditional dialects (which both explicitly mention its rarity or absence), therefore leaving the spelling somewhat inexplicable. However, this may be because such a excrescent /w/ was absorbed by a following /uː/ (as in words with etymological /w/ such as whom, two) after it became established in the spelling but before our earliest orthoepic records.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hwore,whhore,whoer,whorre,whroe,wohre,wwhore
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for whore
Misspelling Variants of "whore"
Frequency rank: #8,877 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: