acre
/ˈeɪ.kə/
"acre" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“acre” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,877 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,877
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 2
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An English unit of land area (symbol: a. or ac.) originally denoting a day's ploughing for a yoke of oxen, now standardized as 4,840 square yards or 4,046.86 square metres.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | acre |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈeɪ.kə/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #7,877 |
| Misspellings tracked | 2 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “acre” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for acre is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈeɪ.kə/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,877 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 2 likely wrong-spelling variants for acre, including "accre" and "acrre". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "AR", "AE", "are", 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 *h₂eǵ-? Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵros Proto-Germanic *akraz Proto-West Germanic *akr Old English æcer Middle English aker English acre From Middle English acre, aker, from Old English æcer (“field where crops are grown”), f… The correct English form is acre, spelled A-C-R-E.
Definition
- 1An English unit of land area (symbol: a. or ac.) originally denoting a day's ploughing for a yoke of oxen, now standardized as 4,840 square yards or 4,046.86 square metres.
- 2An English unit of land area (symbol: a. or ac.) originally denoting a day's ploughing for a yoke of oxen, now standardized as 4,840 square yards or 4,046.86 square metres.
- 3Any of various similar units of area in other systems.
- 4A wide expanse.
- 5A large quantity.
- 6A field.
- 7The acre's breadth by the length, English units of length equal to the statute dimensions of the acre: 22 yd (≈20 m) by 220 yd (≈200 m).
- 8A duel fought between individual Scots and Englishmen in the borderlands.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ-? Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵros Proto-Germanic *akraz Proto-West Germanic *akr Old English æcer Middle English aker English acre From Middle English acre, aker, from Old English æcer (“field where crops are grown”), from Proto-West Germanic *akr, from Proto-Germanic *akraz (“field”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵros (“field”). Doublet of agriculture. Cognate with Scots acre, aker, acker (“acre, field, arable land”), North Frisian ecir (“field, a measure of land”), West Frisian eker (“field”), Dutch akker (“field”), German Acker (“field, acre”), Norwegian åker (“field”) and Swedish åker (“field”), Icelandic akur (“field”), Latin ager (“land, field, acre, countryside”), Ancient Greek ἀγρός (agrós, “field”), Sanskrit अज्र (ájra, “field, plain”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: accre,acrre
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of acre - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “acre”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-C-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈeɪ.kə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “AR” - see the side-by-side comparison. acre vs AR
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.