burn
/bɜːn/
"burn" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“burn” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,821 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,821
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A physical injury caused by heat, cold, electricity, radiation or caustic chemicals.
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 | burn |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɜːn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,821 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “burn” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for burn is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɜːn/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,821 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 11 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 burn, with forms such as "bburn", "brun", and "bunr". 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, "but", "buy", "bus", 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 bernen (collateral form of brennen), from Old English birnan (“to burn”), metathesis from Proto-West Germanic *brinnan, from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw-, present stem from *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of… The correct English form is burn, spelled B-U-R-N.
Definition
- 1A physical injury caused by heat, cold, electricity, radiation or caustic chemicals.
- 2A sensation resembling such an injury.
- 3The act of burning something with fire.
- 4An intense non-physical sting, as left by shame or an effective insult.
- 5An effective insult, often in the expression sick burn (excellent or badass insult).
- 6Physical sensation in the muscles following strenuous exercise, caused by build-up of lactic acid.
- 7Tobacco.
- 8The writing of data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip.
- 9The operation or result of burning or baking, as in brickmaking.
- 10A disease in vegetables; brand.
- 11The firing of a spacecraft's rockets in order to change its course.
Etymology
From Middle English bernen (collateral form of brennen), from Old English birnan (“to burn”), metathesis from Proto-West Germanic *brinnan, from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw-, present stem from *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of brew. Cognate with Cimbrian prönnan (“to burn”), Dutch barnen, branden (“to burn”), German brinnen (“to burn”), Luxembourgish brennen (“to burn”), Vilamovian brīn (“to burn”), Yiddish ברענען (brenen, “to burn”), Danish brænde (“to burn”), Faroese, Icelandic brenna (“to burn”), Norwegian Bokmål brenne (“to burn”), Norwegian Nynorsk brenna, brenne (“to burn”), Swedish brinna (“to burn”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 (brinnan, “to burn”). See also Middle Irish brennim (“drink up”), bruinnim (“bubble up”); also Middle Irish bréo (“flame”), Albanian burth (“Cyclamen hederifolium, mouth burning”), Sanskrit भुरति (bhurati, “moves quickly, twitches, fidgets”). More at brew.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bburn,brun,bunr,burnn,burrn,ubrn
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of burn - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “burn”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-U-R-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɜːn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “but” - see the side-by-side comparison. burn vs but
- 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.