yellow
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "yellow", 6-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 "yellow" 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 "yellow" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
yellow is aEnglishnoun. It means: The color of sunflower petals and lemons; the color obtained by mixing green and red light, or by subtracting blue from white light; the color evoked by light of wavelength around 580 nm; one of th... Pronounced /ˈjɛl.əʊ/. It ranks #2,097 in English word frequency. Often confused with yellows and yell.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | yellow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈjɛl.əʊ/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #2,097 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for yellow is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈjɛl.əʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,097 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.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 yellow, with forms such as "eyllow", "yelloww", and "yellwo". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "yellows", "yell", "Yellen", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English yelwe, yelou, from Old English ġeolwe, oblique form of Old English ġeolu, from Proto-West Germanic *gelu, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃wós, from *ǵʰelh₃- (“gleam, yellow”). Cognate with Scots yella (“yello… 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 yellow, spelled Y-E-L-L-O-W, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The color of sunflower petals and lemons; the color obtained by mixing green and red light, or by subtracting blue from white light; the color evoked by light of wavelength around 580 nm; one of the three primary colors in subtractive color systems.
- 2The middle light in a set of three traffic lights, the lighting of which indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection if it is safe to do so.
- 3One of the color balls used in snooker, with a value of 2 points.
- 4One of two groups of object balls, or a ball from that group, as used in the principally British version of pool that makes use of unnumbered balls (the yellow(s) and red(s)); contrast stripes and solids in the originally American version with numbered balls).
- 5A yellow card.
- 6Any of various pierid butterflies of the subfamily Coliadinae, especially the yellow colored species. Compare sulphur.
Etymology
From Middle English yelwe, yelou, from Old English ġeolwe, oblique form of Old English ġeolu, from Proto-West Germanic *gelu, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃wós, from *ǵʰelh₃- (“gleam, yellow”). Cognate with Scots yella (“yellow”), North Frisian gööl, güül (“yellow”), Saterland Frisian jeel (“yellow”), West Frisian giel (“yellow”), Cimbrian gel, ghéel (“yellow”), Dutch geel (“yellow”), Dutch Low Saxon gael, gel (“yellow”), German gelb, gehl (“yellow”), German Low German gel, geel, gęl, gäl (“yellow”), Luxembourgish giel (“yellow”), Vilamovian gaoł (“yellow”), Yiddish געל (gel), געלב (gelb, “yellow”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish gul (“yellow”), Faroese and Icelandic gulur (“yellow”). Compare also Welsh gell (“bay, tawny”), Latin helvus (“dull yellow”), Irish geal (“white, bright”), Italian giallo (“yellow”) Lithuanian žalias (“green”), Ancient Greek χλωρός (khlōrós, “light green”), Persian زرد (zard, “yellow”), Sanskrit हरि (hari, “greenish-yellow”), Russian жёлтый (žóltyj, “yellow”), Russian зелёный (zeljónyj, “green”). The verb is from Middle English yelwen, ȝalowen, ȝolewen, from Old English ġeolwian, from the adjective.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: eyllow,yelloww,yellwo,yelolw,yelow,ylelow,yyellow
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for yellow
Misspelling Variants of "yellow"
Frequency rank: #2,097 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter Y in our English index: