bestowed
/bɪˈstoʊd/
"bestowed" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bestowed” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #17,302 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #17,302
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 12
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past and past participle of bestow
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 | bestowed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /bɪˈstoʊd/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #17,302 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bestowed” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bestowed is 8 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɪˈstoʊd/. Corpus data places it at rank #17,302 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "simple past and past participle of bestow".
Our generated misspelling index lists 12 likely wrong-spelling variants for bestowed, with forms such as "bbestowed", "besotwed", and "besstowed". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "bestow", "bested", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is bestowed, spelled B-E-S-T-O-W-E-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of bestow
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbestowed,besotwed,besstowed,bestoewd,bestowde,bestowedd,bestowwed,besttowed,bestwoed,betsowed,bsetowed,ebstowed
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of bestowed - 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 “bestowed”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-E-S-T-O-W-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɪˈstoʊd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “bestow” - see the side-by-side comparison. bestowed vs bestow
- 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.