chair
/t͡ʃɛə/
"chair" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“chair” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,067 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,067
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An item of furniture used to sit on or in, comprising a seat, legs or wheels, back, and sometimes arm rests, for use by one person.
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 | chair |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /t͡ʃɛə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,067 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “chair” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for chair is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /t͡ʃɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,067 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 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for chair, with forms such as "cahir", "cchair", and "chairr". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "chi", "CHR", "chat", 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 chayer, chaire, chaiere, chaere, chayre, chayere, from Old French chaiere, chaere, from Latin cathedra (“seat”), from Ancient Greek καθέδρα (kathédra), from κατά (katá, “down”) + ἕδρα (hédra, “seat”). Partially displaced native stool and… The correct English form is chair, spelled C-H-A-I-R.
Definition
- 1An item of furniture used to sit on or in, comprising a seat, legs or wheels, back, and sometimes arm rests, for use by one person.
- 2Clipping of chairperson.
- 3The post or position of chairperson.
- 4The seating position of a particular musician in an orchestra.
- 5A cast-iron component used on railways to support bullhead rails and secure them to the sleepers.
- 6One of two possible conformers of cyclohexane rings (the other being boat), shaped roughly like a chair.
- 7Ellipsis of electric chair (“device used for performing execution”).
- 8A distinguished professorship at a university.
- 9A vehicle for one person; either a sedan borne upon poles, or a two-wheeled carriage drawn by one horse; a gig.
- 10The seat or office of a person in authority, such as a judge or bishop.
- 11An assigned position in a beauty salon or barbershop.
Etymology
From Middle English chayer, chaire, chaiere, chaere, chayre, chayere, from Old French chaiere, chaere, from Latin cathedra (“seat”), from Ancient Greek καθέδρα (kathédra), from κατά (katá, “down”) + ἕδρα (hédra, “seat”). Partially displaced native stool and settle, which now have more specialised senses. Doublet of cathedra and chaise.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cahir,cchair,chairr,chari,chhair,chiar,hcair
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of chair - 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 “chair”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-H-A-I-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /t͡ʃɛə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “chi” - see the side-by-side comparison. chair vs chi
- 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.