zone
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "zone", 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 "zone" 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 "zone" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
zone is aEnglishnoun. It means: Each of the five regions of the earth's surface into which it was divided by climatic differences, namely the torrid zone (between the tropics), two temperate zones (between the tropics and the pol... Pronounced /zoʊn/. It ranks #1,978 in English word frequency. Often confused with zoo and zoom.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | zone |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /zoʊn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,978 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for zone is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /zoʊn/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,978 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 18 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for zone, with forms such as "ozne", "znoe", and "zoen". 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, "zoo", "zoom", "zoned", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin zōna, from Ancient Greek ζώνη (zṓnē, “girdle, belt”). 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 zone, spelled Z-O-N-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Each of the five regions of the earth's surface into which it was divided by climatic differences, namely the torrid zone (between the tropics), two temperate zones (between the tropics and the polar circles), and two frigid zones (within the polar circles).
- 2Any given region or area of the world.
- 3A given area distinguished on the basis of a particular characteristic, use, restriction, etc.
- 4A restricted category or virtual place.
- 5A band or area of growth encircling anything.
- 6A band or stripe extending around a body.
- 7A series of planes having mutually parallel intersections.
- 8The strike zone.
- 9Every of the three parts of an ice rink, divided by two blue lines.
- 10A semicircular area in front of each goal.
- 11A mental state of high concentration and performance; see: in the zone.
- 12A defensive scheme where defenders guard a particular area of the court or field, as opposed to a particular opposing player.
- 13That collection of a domain's DNS resource records, the domain and its subdomains, that are not delegated to another authority.
- 14A logical group of network devices on AppleTalk (an obsolete networking protocol).
- 15A belt or girdle.
- 16The curved surface of a frustum of a sphere, the portion of surface of a sphere delimited by parallel planes.
- 17A frustum of a sphere.
- 18A circuit; a circumference.
Etymology
From Latin zōna, from Ancient Greek ζώνη (zṓnē, “girdle, belt”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ozne,znoe,zoen,zonne,zzone
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for zone
Misspelling Variants of "zone"
Frequency rank: #1,978 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter Z in our English index: