bow
/bəʊ/
"bow" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bow” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #4,287 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #4,287
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A weapon made of a curved piece of wood or other flexible material whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows.
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 | bow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bəʊ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,287 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bow” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bow is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bəʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,287 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for bow, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BS", "br", 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 bowe, from Old English boga, Proto-West Germanic *bogō, from Proto-Germanic *bugô. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Booge (“arch, bow, curve”), West Frisian bôge (“arc, arch, bow”), Dutch boog (“arc, arch, bow”), German Bogen (“ar… The correct English form is bow, spelled B-O-W.
Definition
- 1A weapon made of a curved piece of wood or other flexible material whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows.
- 2A curved bend in a rod or planar surface, or in a linear formation such as a river (see oxbow).
- 3A rod with horsehair (or an artificial substitute) stretched between the ends, used for playing various stringed musical instruments.
- 4A stringed instrument (chordophone), consisting of a stick with a single taut cord stretched between the ends, most often played by plucking.
- 5A type of knot with two loops, used to tie together two cords such as shoelaces or apron strings, and frequently used as decoration, such as in gift-wrapping.
- 6Anything bent or curved, such as a rainbow.
- 7The U-shaped piece which goes around the neck of an ox and fastens it to the yoke.
- 8Either of the arms of a pair of spectacles, running from the side of the lens to behind the wearer's ear.
- 9Any instrument consisting of an elastic rod, with ends connected by a string, employed for giving reciprocating motion to a drill, or for preparing and arranging hair, fur, etc., used by hatters.
- 10A crude sort of quadrant formerly used for taking the sun's altitude at sea.
- 11Two pieces of wood which form the arched forward part of a saddle tree.
- 12The part of a key that is not inserted into the lock and that is used to turn the key.
- 13Either of the two handles of a pair of scissors.
Etymology
From Middle English bowe, from Old English boga, Proto-West Germanic *bogō, from Proto-Germanic *bugô. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Booge (“arch, bow, curve”), West Frisian bôge (“arc, arch, bow”), Dutch boog (“arc, arch, bow”), German Bogen (“arc, arch, bow, curve”), Luxembourgish Bou (“arc, arch, bow, curve”), Vilamovian böga (“arc, arch, bend, bow, curve”), Yiddish בויגן (boygn, “arc, arch, bow, curve”), Danish bue (“arc, arch, bow, curve”), Faroese, Icelandic bogi (“arch, bow, vault”), Jamtish buga (“bow”), Norwegian Bokmål bue (“arc, arch, bow”), Norwegian Nynorsk boge (“arc, arch, bow”), Swedish båge (“bow”), Crimean Gothic boga (“bow”).
This word in other languages
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 “bow”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-O-W - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bəʊ/ (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. bow 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.