sail
[…]
The verdict
“sail” is uncommon German (frequency #58,245 among 107,600 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #58,245
- frequency rank, German
- 107,600
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - großes Stück Tuch an einem Schiffsmast, mit dem der Wind zur Fortbewegung genutzt wird, oder etwas Vergleichbares: Segel
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sail |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | […] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #58,245 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sail” sits in German frequency
Rare enough to double-check
sail is uncommon German at frequency #58,245 among 107,600 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed […]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for sail in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct German form is sail, spelled S-A-I-L.
Definition
- 1großes Stück Tuch an einem Schiffsmast, mit dem der Wind zur Fortbewegung genutzt wird, oder etwas Vergleichbares: Segel
- 2Reise auf einem Segelschiff: Segelfahrt
- 3mit Segeln ausgestattetes Schiff: Segelschiff
- 4Teil einer Windmühle: Flügel; Tuch, mit dem dieser Flügel bespannt ist
- 5oberer Teil eines U-Bootes: Turm
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "sail"?
What does "sail" mean?
How do you pronounce "sail"?
What language does "sail" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “sail”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is S-A-I-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as […] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
Other uncommon German words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.