alley
/ˈæl.i/
"alley" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“alley” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,634 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #8,634
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A narrow street or passageway, especially one through the middle of a block giving access to the rear of lots of buildings.
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 | alley |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈæl.i/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #8,634 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “alley” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for alley is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈæl.i/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,634 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for alley, with forms such as "alely", "aley", and "alleyy". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ally", "axle", "aloe", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English aleye, from Anglo-Norman aleie, feminine of alé, past participle of aler (“to go”) (French aller). Doublet of allée. The correct English form is alley, spelled A-L-L-E-Y.
Definition
- 1A narrow street or passageway, especially one through the middle of a block giving access to the rear of lots of buildings.
- 2The area between the outfielders.
- 3An establishment where bowling is played.
- 4An elongated wooden strip of floor along which a bowling ball is rolled.
- 5The extra area between the sidelines or tramlines on a tennis court that is used for doubles matches.
- 6A walk or passage in a garden or park, bordered by rows of trees or bushes.
- 7A passageway between rows of pews in a church.
- 8Any passage having the entrance represented as wider than the exit, so as to give the appearance of length.
- 9The space between two rows of compositors' stands in a printing office.
- 10A group of clowns; the collective noun for clowns.
Etymology
From Middle English aleye, from Anglo-Norman aleie, feminine of alé, past participle of aler (“to go”) (French aller). Doublet of allée.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: alely,aley,alleyy,allye,laley
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of alley - 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 “alley”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-L-L-E-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈæl.i/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “ally” - see the side-by-side comparison. alley vs ally
- 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.