arm
/ɑːm/
"arm" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“arm” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,887 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,887
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The portion of the upper human appendage, from the shoulder to the wrist and sometimes including the hand.
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 | arm |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɑːm/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,887 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “arm” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for arm is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɑːm/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,887 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No generated misspelling entries exist for arm in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "as", "at", "aw", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- Proto-Indo-European *h₂érmos Proto-Germanic *armaz Proto-West Germanic *arm Old English earm Middle English arm English arm From Middle English arm, from Old English earm (Anglian arm), from Proto-West Germanic *arm… The correct English form is arm, spelled A-R-M.
Definition
- 1The portion of the upper human appendage, from the shoulder to the wrist and sometimes including the hand.
- 2The extended portion of the upper limb, from the shoulder to the elbow.
- 3A limb, or locomotive or prehensile organ, of an invertebrate animal.
- 4The part of a piece of clothing that covers the arm.
- 5A long, narrow, more or less rigid part of an object extending from the main part or centre of the object, such as the armrest of an armchair, a crane, a pair of spectacles or a pair of compasses.
- 6A bay or inlet off a main body of water.
- 7A branch of an organization.
- 8Power; might; strength; support.
- 9A pitcher
- 10One of the two parts of a chromosome.
- 11A group of patients in a medical trial.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- Proto-Indo-European *h₂érmos Proto-Germanic *armaz Proto-West Germanic *arm Old English earm Middle English arm English arm From Middle English arm, from Old English earm (Anglian arm), from Proto-West Germanic *arm, from Proto-Germanic *armaz (“arm”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂(e)rmos (“a fitting, joint; arm, forequarter”), a suffixed form of *h₂er- (“to join, fit together”). Cognates Akin to Dutch arm, German Arm, Yiddish אָרעם (orem), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish arm. Indo-European cognates include Latin armus (“the uppermost part of the arm, shoulder”), Bulgarian рамо (ramo), Polish ramię, Serbo-Croatian rȁme, Armenian արմունկ (armunk, “elbow”), Ancient Greek ἁρμός (harmós, “joint, shoulder”) and ἅρμα (hárma, “wagon, chariot”), Avestan 𐬀𐬭𐬨𐬀 (arma), Old Persian [script needed] (arma).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
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 “arm”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-R-M - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɑːm/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “as” - see the side-by-side comparison. arm vs as
- 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.