ben
/bɛn/
"ben" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ben” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,063 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,063
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A prayer; a petition.
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 | ben |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɛn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #2,063 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ben” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ben is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɛn/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,063 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A prayer; a petition.".
ben doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "bi", "BS", 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 ben, bene, from Old English bēn (“prayer, request, favor, compulsory service”), from Proto-West Germanic *bōni, from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“supplication”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to say”). Related to ban. More at boon. The correct English form is ben, spelled B-E-N.
Definition
- 1A prayer; a petition.
Etymology
From Middle English ben, bene, from Old English bēn (“prayer, request, favor, compulsory service”), from Proto-West Germanic *bōni, from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“supplication”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to say”). Related to ban. More at boon.
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 “ben”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-E-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɛn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “by” - see the side-by-side comparison. ben vs by
- 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.