ash
/æʃ/
"ash" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ash” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,477 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #5,477
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Solid remains of a fire.
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 | ash |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /æʃ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,477 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ash” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ash is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /æʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,477 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.
No misspelling variants are generated for ash in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "at", "aw", "AU", 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 *h₂eHs-der.? Proto-Germanic *askǭ Proto-West Germanic *askā Old English æsce Middle English asshe English ash From Middle English asshe, from Old English æsċe, from Proto-West Germanic *askā, from Proto-Germanic *askǭ (com… The correct English form is ash, spelled A-S-H.
Definition
- 1Solid remains of a fire.
- 2The nonaqueous remains of a material subjected to any complete oxidation process.
- 3Fine particles from a volcano, volcanic ash.
- 4Human (or animal) remains after cremation.
- 5Mortal remains in general.
- 6What remains after a catastrophe.
- 7A gray color, similar to that of the remains of a fire.
- 8The resultant remaining more stable patterns that emerge from the evolution of a soup or a similarly random pattern.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eHs-der.? Proto-Germanic *askǭ Proto-West Germanic *askā Old English æsce Middle English asshe English ash From Middle English asshe, from Old English æsċe, from Proto-West Germanic *askā, from Proto-Germanic *askǭ (compare West Frisian jiske, Dutch as, Low German Asch, German Asche, Danish aske, Swedish aska, Norwegian aske), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eHs-; see it for cognates. The rare plural axen is from Middle English axen, axnen, from Old English axan, asċan (“ashes”) (plural of Old English axe, æsċe (“ash”)).
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 “ash”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-S-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /æʃ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “at” - see the side-by-side comparison. ash vs at
- 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.