blade
/bleɪd/
"blade" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“blade” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,191 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #5,191
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The (typically sharp-edged) part of a knife, sword, razor, or other tool with which it cuts.
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 | blade |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bleɪd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,191 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “blade” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for blade is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bleɪd/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,191 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 26 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 blade, with forms such as "balde", "bblade", and "bladde". 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, "BLE", "blue", "brad", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English blade, blad, from Old English blæd (“leaf”), from Proto-West Germanic *blad, from Proto-Germanic *bladą, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰl̥h₃-o-to-m, from *bʰleh₃- (“to thrive, bloom”). See also West Frisian bled, Dutch blad, German Blatt, D… The correct English form is blade, spelled B-L-A-D-E.
Definition
- 1The (typically sharp-edged) part of a knife, sword, razor, or other tool with which it cuts.
- 2The (typically sharp-edged) part of a knife, sword, razor, or other tool with which it cuts.
- 3The (typically sharp-edged) part of a knife, sword, razor, or other tool with which it cuts.
- 4The flat functional end or piece of a propeller, oar, hockey stick, chisel, screwdriver, skate, etc.
- 5The narrow leaf of a grass or cereal.
- 6The thin, flat part of a plant leaf, attached to a stem (petiole).
- 7A flat bone, especially the shoulder blade.
- 8A cut of beef from near the shoulder blade (part of the chuck).
- 9The part of the tongue just behind the tip, used to make laminal consonants.
- 10A piece of prepared, sharp-edged stone, often flint, at least twice as long as it is wide; a long flake of ground-edge stone or knapped vitreous stone.
- 11A throw characterized by a tight parabolic trajectory due to a steep lateral attitude.
- 12The rudder, daggerboard, or centerboard of a vessel.
- 13A bulldozer or surface-grading machine with mechanically adjustable blade that is nominally perpendicular to the forward motion of the vehicle.
- 14A dashing young man.
- 15A homosexual, usually male.
- 16An area of a city which is commonly known for prostitution.
- 17Thin plate, foil.
- 18One of a series of small plates that make up the aperture or the shutter of a camera.
- 19The principal rafters of a roof.
- 20The four large shell plates on the sides, and the five large ones of the middle, of the carapace of the sea turtle, which yield the best tortoise shell.
- 21Ellipsis of blade server.
- 22Synonym of knifeblade.
- 23An exterior product of vectors. (The product may have more than two factors. Also, a scalar counts as a 0-blade, a vector as a 1-blade; an exterior product of k vectors may be called a k-blade.)
- 24The part of a key that is inserted into the lock.
- 25An artificial foot used by amputee athletes, shaped like an upside-down question mark.
- 26The quality of singing with a pure, resonant sound; especially of a countertenor.
Etymology
From Middle English blade, blad, from Old English blæd (“leaf”), from Proto-West Germanic *blad, from Proto-Germanic *bladą, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰl̥h₃-o-to-m, from *bʰleh₃- (“to thrive, bloom”). See also West Frisian bled, Dutch blad, German Blatt, Danish blad, Irish bláth (“flower”), Welsh blodyn (“flower”), Tocharian A pält, Tocharian B pilta (“leaf”), Albanian fletë (“leaf”). Similar usage in German Sägeblatt (“saw blade”, literally “saw leaf”). Doublet of blat. More at blow.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: balde,bblade,bladde,blaed,bldae,bllade,lbade
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of blade - 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 “blade”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-L-A-D-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bleɪd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “BLE” - see the side-by-side comparison. blade vs BLE
- 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.