work
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "work", 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 "work" 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 "work" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
work is aEnglishnoun. It means: Employment. Pronounced /wɜː(ɹ)k/. It ranks #116 in English word frequency. Often confused with wow and wot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | work |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /wɜː(ɹ)k/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #116 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for work is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wɜː(ɹ)k/. Corpus data places it at rank #116 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 19 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 work, with forms such as "owrk", "wokr", and "workk". 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, "wow", "wot", "wry", 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 *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Germanic *werką Proto-West Germanic *werk Old English weorc Middle English werk English work From Middle English work, werk, from Old English weorc, from Pr… 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 work, spelled W-O-R-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Employment.
- 2Employment.
- 3Employment.
- 4Employment.
- 5Effort.
- 6Effort.
- 7Effort.
- 8Effort.
- 9Effort.
- 10Effort.
- 11Effort.
- 12Product; the result of effort.
- 13Product; the result of effort.
- 14Product; the result of effort.
- 15Product; the result of effort.
- 16The staging of events to appear as real.
- 17Ore before it is dressed.
- 18The equipment needed to inject a drug (syringes, needles, swabs etc.)
- 19The confident attitude of a drag queen.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Germanic *werką Proto-West Germanic *werk Old English weorc Middle English werk English work From Middle English work, werk, from Old English weorc, from Proto-West Germanic *werk, from Proto-Germanic *werką (“work”), from Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom (“work”), from Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- (“to make”). Cognates Cognate with Scots wark (“work”), North Frisian werk (“work”), Saterland Frisian Wierk (“work”), West Frisian wurk (“work”), Dutch werk (“work”), German Werk (“work”), German Low German Wark (“work”), Luxembourgish Wierk (“work”), Danish værk (“work”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish verk (“work”); also Breton ober (“to do, make”), Cornish gul, gwul (“to do, make”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic fearg (“anger”), Manx ferg (“anger”), Pictish ᚒᚏᚏᚐᚉᚈ (urract, “he made”), Welsh gwneud, neud (“to do, make”), Greek έργο (érgo, “work”), Albanian argëtim (“entertainment; fun, pleasure”), argëtoj (“to amuse, entertain”), Lithuanian váržas (“fish snaring net”), Macedonian врша (vrša, “fish-trap”), Polish wiersza (“fish-trap”), Russian and Ukrainian ве́рша (vérša, “fish-trap”), Serbo-Croatian вр̑ша, vȓša (“fish-trap”), Slovak and Slovene vrša (“fish-trap”), Aghwan 𐔱𐕒𐕙𐔵 (borz, “labour, work”), Armenian գործ (gorc, “work”), Northern Kurdish werz (“bed, field, patch; season”), Avestan 𐬬𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬰 (vər^əz, “to do, work”), Persian ورز (varz, “art, craft, trade”), ورزه (varze, “art, profession, trade”), ورزیدن (varzidan, “to exercise; to train; to work”), Tocharian B warkṣäl (“energy, power, strength”). English cognates include bulwark, boulevard, energy, erg, georgic, liturgy, metallurgy, organ, surgeon, wright. Doublet of erg and ergon.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: owrk,wokr,workk,worrk,wrok,wwork
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for work
Misspelling Variants of "work"
Frequency rank: #116 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: