brach
/bɹæt͡ʃ/
"brach" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“brach” is uncommon English (frequency #89,179 among 31,241 “B” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #89,179
- frequency rank, English
- 31,241
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Originally, a synonym of scent hound (“a hunting dog that tracks prey using its sense of smell rather than by its vision”); later, any female hound; a bitch hound.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | brach |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɹæt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #89,179 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “brach” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
brach is uncommon English at frequency #89,179 among 31,241 “B” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /bɹæt͡ʃ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
brach doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English brache (“hunting dog, especially a small scent hound; female dog, bitch (?); lapdog (?)”), probably a back-formation from Old French brachès, brachez, the plural of brachet (“female scent hound”), a diminutive of brac, from Old High… The correct English form is brach, spelled B-R-A-C-H.
Definition
- 1Originally, a synonym of scent hound (“a hunting dog that tracks prey using its sense of smell rather than by its vision”); later, any female hound; a bitch hound.
- 2A despicable or disagreeable woman; a bitch.
Etymology
From Late Middle English brache (“hunting dog, especially a small scent hound; female dog, bitch (?); lapdog (?)”), probably a back-formation from Old French brachès, brachez, the plural of brachet (“female scent hound”), a diminutive of brac, from Old High German braccho, bracco, bracko (“scent hound”) (modern German Bracke); further etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Germanic *brēkijaną (compare Latin fragrō (“to emit a smell”), Middle High German bræhen (“to smell (something); to use the sense of smell; to have a (bad) smell”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreHg- (“to have a strong odour, to smell”). cognates * Italian bracco * Medieval Latin bracco * Occitan brac * Spanish braco
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 “brach”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-R-A-C-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɹæt͡ʃ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.