born
/bɔːn/
"born" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“born” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #843 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #843
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - past participle of bear; given birth to.
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 | born |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /bɔːn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #843 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “born” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for born is 4 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɔːn/. Corpus data places it at rank #843 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for born, with forms such as "bborn", "bonr", and "bornn". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "br", "boy", "box", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English born, boren, borne, iborne, from Old English boren, ġeboren, from Proto-West Germanic *boran, *gaboran, from Proto-Germanic *buranaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *beraną (“to bear, carry”), equivalent to bear + -en. Cognate with Sa… The correct English form is born, spelled B-O-R-N.
Definition
- 1past participle of bear; given birth to.
- 2past participle of bear in other senses.
Etymology
From Middle English born, boren, borne, iborne, from Old English boren, ġeboren, from Proto-West Germanic *boran, *gaboran, from Proto-Germanic *buranaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *beraną (“to bear, carry”), equivalent to bear + -en. Cognate with Saterland Frisian gebooren (“born”), West Frisian berne (“born”), Dutch geboren (“born”), German geboren (“born”), Swedish boren (“born”).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bborn,bonr,bornn,borrn,bron,obrn
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of born - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “born”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-O-R-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɔːn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “br” - see the side-by-side comparison. born vs br
- 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.