caste
/kæst/noun
caste is spelled C-A-S-T-E: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 4.0 times per million words in written English, the 12,940th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “cast vs caste” about 70 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, caste means “Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or similar found historically in other cultures” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of caste is castes.
How many letters and syllables are in caste?
| Letters | 5: C-A-S-T-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.0 times per million words; the 12,940th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is caste?
Caste appears 4.0 times per million words in written English, the 12,940th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce caste?
- UK /kɑːst/
- /kast/
- US /kæst/
Caste has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-caste.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with caste
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: cast, karst (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with caste?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as caste from its last stressed vowel (/æst/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of caste
- castes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does caste mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or similar found historically in other cultures.
- 2
A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly associate with each other.
- 3
The division of society into castes; the caste system.
- 4
A class of polymorphous eusocial insects of a particular size and function within a colony.
In beehives, most bees belong to the worker caste.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Caste in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense hereditary social class:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does caste come from?
Borrowed from Portuguese or Spanish casta (“lineage, breed, race”), which the OED derives from Portuguese casto (“chaste”), from Latin castus (“chaste"; "chastity”), Coromines (1987) argues instead for a hypothetical Gothic form *𐌺𐌰𐍃𐍄𐍃 (*kasts, “group, collection of animals”), cognate with English cast, from Proto-Germanic *kastuz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ǵ-es-.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).