woman
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 "woman", 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 "woman" 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 "woman" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
woman is aEnglishnoun. It means: An adult female human. Pronounced /ˈwʊm.ən/. It ranks #452 in English word frequency. Often confused with won and worn.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | woman |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwʊm.ən/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #452 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 19 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for woman is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈwʊm.ən/. Corpus data places it at rank #452 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 6 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 woman, with forms such as "owman", "wmoan", and "woamn". 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 19 confusable-pair relationships, "won", "worn", "womb", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English womman, from earlier wimman, wifman, from Old English wīfmann (“woman”, literally “female person”), a compound of wīf (“woman, female”, whence English wife) + mann (“person, human being”, whence English man). For details on the pronuncia… 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 woman, spelled W-O-M-A-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An adult female human.
- 2All female humans collectively; womankind.
- 3A female person, usually an adult: a (generally adult) female sentient being, whether human, supernatural, elf, alien, etc.
- 4A wife (or sometimes a fiancée or girlfriend).
- 5A female person who is extremely fond of or devoted to a specified type of thing. (Used as the last element of a compound.)
- 6A female attendant or servant.
Etymology
From Middle English womman, from earlier wimman, wifman, from Old English wīfmann (“woman”, literally “female person”), a compound of wīf (“woman, female”, whence English wife) + mann (“person, human being”, whence English man). For details on the pronunciation and spelling history, see the usage notes below. Cognate with Scots woman, weman (“woman”), Saterland Frisian Wieuwmoanske (“female person, female human, woman”). Similar constructions can be found in West Frisian frommes (“woman, girl”) (from frou and minske, literally "woman human"). Further information on vocalic development The current pronunciation of the first vowel of the singular began to appear in western England in the 13th century under the rounding influence of the w, though the older pronunciation with /i/ (→ modern /ɪ/) remained in use into the 15th century. Although the vowel of the plural was sometimes also altered to /u/ (→ modern /ʊ/) beginning in the 14th century, the pronunciation with /ɪ/ ultimately won out there, possibly under the influence of pairs like foot–feet. However, some speakers (especially of New Zealand English or South African English) have either retained or reinnovated the pronunciation of the plural with /ʊ/. The modern spelling women for the plural is due to influence of the singular; it is attested from the 15th century. For a time in the 16th and 17th centuries, the pronunciation of the singular sometimes drifted even further back towards /uː/ or /ɔː~oː/ (→ modern /oʊ~əʊ/) and the plural sometimes drifted even further forward towards /iː/, leading to comparisons of the words to "woe man" or "we men".)
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: owman,wmoan,woamn,womann,womman,womna,wwoman
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for woman
Misspelling Variants of "woman"
Frequency rank: #452 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: