amber
/ˈam.bə/
"amber" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“amber” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,414 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,414
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.
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 | amber |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈam.bə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,414 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “amber” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for amber is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈam.bə/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,414 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for amber, with forms such as "abmer", "ambber", and "amberr". 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, "AmE", "AMR", "amen", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English ambre, aumbre, from Old French aumbre, ambre, from Arabic عَنْبَر (ʕanbar, “ambergris”), from Middle Persian 𐭠𐭭𐭡𐭫 (ʾnbl /ambar/, “ambergris”). Compare English lamber, ambergris. Displaced Middle English smulting (from Old English s… The correct English form is amber, spelled A-M-B-E-R.
Definition
- 1Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.
- 2Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.
- 3A hard, generally yellow to brown translucent or transparent fossil resin from extinct coniferous trees of the pine genus, used for jewellery, decoration and later dissolved as a binder in varnishes. One variety, blue amber, appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight.
- 4A yellow-orange colour.
- 5The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop when safe to do so. See also yellow light.
- 6The stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.
- 7Hesitance to proceed, or limited approval to proceed; an amber light.
Etymology
From Middle English ambre, aumbre, from Old French aumbre, ambre, from Arabic عَنْبَر (ʕanbar, “ambergris”), from Middle Persian 𐭠𐭭𐭡𐭫 (ʾnbl /ambar/, “ambergris”). Compare English lamber, ambergris. Displaced Middle English smulting (from Old English smelting (“amber”)), Old English eolhsand (“amber”), Old English glær (“amber”), and Old English sāp (“amber, resin, pomade”). * The nucleotide sequence "UAG" is named "amber" for the first person to isolate the amber mutation, California Institute of Technology graduate student Harris Bernstein, whose last name ("Bernstein") is the German word for the resin "amber".
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: abmer,ambber,amberr,ambre,amebr,ammber,maber
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of amber - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “amber”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-M-B-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈam.bə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “AmE” - see the side-by-side comparison. amber vs AmE
- 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.