brew
/bɹuː/
"brew" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“brew” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #12,194 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #12,194
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To make tea or coffee by mixing tea leaves or coffee beans with hot water.
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 | brew |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /bɹuː/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #12,194 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “brew” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for brew is 4 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɹuː/. Corpus data places it at rank #12,194 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 8 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 brew, with forms such as "bbrew", "berw", and "breww". 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, "BW", "bro", "bye", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English brewen, from Old English brēowan, from Proto-West Germanic *breuwan, from Proto-Germanic *brewwaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of burn. Cognate with Dutch brouwen, German brauen, Swedish brygga, Norwegian Bokmål brygge; … The correct English form is brew, spelled B-R-E-W.
Definition
- 1To make tea or coffee by mixing tea leaves or coffee beans with hot water.
- 2To heat wine, infusing it with spices; to mull.
- 3To make a hot soup by combining ingredients and boiling them in water.
- 4To make beer by steeping a starch source in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast.
- 5To foment or prepare, as by brewing.
- 6To attend to the business, or go through the processes, of brewing or making beer.
- 7To be in a state of preparation; to be mixing, forming, or gathering.
- 8To boil or seethe; to cook.
Etymology
From Middle English brewen, from Old English brēowan, from Proto-West Germanic *breuwan, from Proto-Germanic *brewwaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of burn. Cognate with Dutch brouwen, German brauen, Swedish brygga, Norwegian Bokmål brygge; also Ancient Greek φρέαρ (phréar, “well”), Latin fervēre (“to be hot; to burn; to boil”), Old Irish bruth (“violent, boiling heat”), Sanskrit भुर्वन् (bhurván, “motion of water”). It may be related to English barley.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbrew,berw,breww,brrew,brwe,rbew
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of brew - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “brew”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-R-E-W - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɹuː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “BW” - see the side-by-side comparison. brew vs BW
- 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.