blain
/bleɪn/
"blain" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“blain” is uncommon English (frequency #65,736 among 4,121 “B” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #65,736
- frequency rank, English
- 4,121
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A skin swelling or sore; a blister; a blotch.
Corpus desk
Index EN-blain · blain · English
blain · rank #65,736 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #65,736
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,121
- PHOTO-FINISH blanched
Nearest frequency peer: blanched (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Long-tail ranks near “blain”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- bioenergy
bioenergy
34,269 corpus weight
- biomedicine
biomedicine
34,268 corpus weight
- birdlife
birdlife
34,267 corpus weight
- blain
blain
34,265 corpus weight
- blanched
blanched
34,264 corpus weight
- bludgeoning
bludgeoning
34,262 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “blain” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | blain |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bleɪn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #65,736 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “blain” in English
Rare enough to double-check
blain is uncommon English at frequency #65,736 among 4,121 “B” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /bleɪn/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A skin swelling or sore; a blister; a blotch.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for blain in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English blein, from Old English bleġen, bleġene, from Proto-Germanic *blajinǭ, *blajjinǭ, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to swell up”). Cognate with West Frisian blein (“blain”), Dutch blein, blegn (“blain”), Middle Low German bleine … The correct English form is blain, spelled B-L-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1A skin swelling or sore; a blister; a blotch.
Etymology
From Middle English blein, from Old English bleġen, bleġene, from Proto-Germanic *blajinǭ, *blajjinǭ, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to swell up”). Cognate with West Frisian blein (“blain”), Dutch blein, blegn (“blain”), Middle Low German bleine (“blain”). Related also to dialectal Norwegian bleime (“blister”), Old Swedish blēma (“blister”), French bleime (“an inflammation of a horse's hoof”).
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "blain", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).