Buddha
/ˈbʊdə/
"buddha" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Buddha” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #9,714 in English word frequency and used as a proper noun.
- #9,714
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Siddhartha Gautama, the Nepali prince and Indian philosopher and teacher who founded Buddhism.
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 | Buddha |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | /ˈbʊdə/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #9,714 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Buddha” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Buddha is 6 letters long, classified as a proper noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbʊdə/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,714 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Siddhartha Gautama, the Nepali prince and Indian philosopher and teacher who founded Buddhism.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for Buddha, with forms such as "bbuddha", "bdudha", and "buddah". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "buddy", "Budd", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Learned borrowing from Pali Buddha (“the Awakened One, the Enlightened One”), from buddha (“awakened, enlightened”), from Sanskrit बुद्ध (buddha, “awakened, enlightened”), past participle of बोधति (bodhati, “to wake, to awaken”). Distantly related to Englis… The correct English form is Buddha, spelled B-U-D-D-H-A.
Definition
- 1Siddhartha Gautama, the Nepali prince and Indian philosopher and teacher who founded Buddhism.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Pali Buddha (“the Awakened One, the Enlightened One”), from buddha (“awakened, enlightened”), from Sanskrit बुद्ध (buddha, “awakened, enlightened”), past participle of बोधति (bodhati, “to wake, to awaken”). Distantly related to English bid and bede. Also cognate with Proto-Slavic *buditi (“to wake up”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbuddha,bdudha,buddah,buddhha,budha,budhda,ubddha
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of Buddha - 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 “Buddha”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-U-D-D-H-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈbʊdə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “buddy” - see the side-by-side comparison. Buddha vs buddy
- 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.