cats
/kæts/
"cats" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cats” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #3,215) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #3,215
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - plural of cat
Corpus desk
Index EN-cats · cats · English
cats · rank #3,215 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #3,215
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH carefully
Nearest frequency peer: carefully (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “cats”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- bound
bound
96,789 corpus weight
- breaks
breaks
96,788 corpus weight
- carefully
carefully
96,787 corpus weight
- cats
cats
96,786 corpus weight
- CEO
CEO
96,785 corpus weight
- choices
choices
96,784 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “cats” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | cats |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kæts/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,215 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “cats”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for cats is neighbouring look-alikes ("CT", "cs", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /kæts/. Frequency #3,215 among 5,599 “C” headwords. Gloss: "plural of cat".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for cats, with forms such as "catss", "catts", and "ccats". 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, "CT", "cs", "cut", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is cats, spelled C-A-T-S.
Definition
- 1plural of cat
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- catss
- catts
- ccats
- ctas
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of cats - 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
How do you spell "cats"?
What does "cats" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "cats"?
How do you pronounce "cats"?
What language does "cats" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "cats", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).