chestnut
/ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)nʌt/
"chestnut" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“chestnut” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #15,775 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #15,775
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 13
- tracked misspellings
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An edible nut (technically a fruit) of the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a nut from a related shrub or tree; or a similar...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | chestnut |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)nʌt/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #15,775 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “chestnut” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for chestnut is 8 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)nʌt/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,775 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 13 likely wrong-spelling variants for chestnut, with forms such as "cchestnut", "cehstnut", and "chesntut". 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 is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is a contraction of chest(en) (“(obsolete) chestnut tree; fruit of this tree, chestnut”) + nut. Chesten is a late variant of chesteine (obsolete), from Middle English chesten, chesteine, chasteine, chesteyne (“chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); fruit… The correct English form is chestnut, spelled C-H-E-S-T-N-U-T.
Definition
- 1An edible nut (technically a fruit) of the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a nut from a related shrub or tree; or a similar nut from an unrelated plant.
- 2In full chestnut tree: the shrub or tree that bears this nut, the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a shrub or tree of the genus Castanea.
- 3In full chestnut tree: the shrub or tree that bears this nut, the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a shrub or tree of the genus Castanea.
- 4In full chestnut tree: the shrub or tree that bears this nut, the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a shrub or tree of the genus Castanea.
- 5Things resembling a chestnut fruit in appearance or colour.
- 6Things resembling a chestnut fruit in appearance or colour.
- 7Things resembling a chestnut fruit in appearance or colour.
- 8Chiefly in old chestnut: a joke, meme, phrase, ploy, etc. which has been repeated so often as to have grown ineffective or tiresome; a cliché.
Etymology
The noun is a contraction of chest(en) (“(obsolete) chestnut tree; fruit of this tree, chestnut”) + nut. Chesten is a late variant of chesteine (obsolete), from Middle English chesten, chesteine, chasteine, chesteyne (“chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); fruit of this tree; wood of this tree”), from Old French chastaigne, chastaine (French châtaigne), from Latin castanea (“chestnut tree; fruit of this tree”) (whence Old English ċisten), from Ancient Greek κᾰστᾰ́νειᾰ (kăstắneiă), a variant of κᾰ́στᾰνᾰ (kắstănă, “sweet chestnut”); for further etymology, see that entry. Doublet of castanet. Noun sense 4 (“joke, phrase, etc., which has been repeated so often as to have grown ineffective or tiresome”) may refer to an 1816 play, The Broken Sword, by William Dimond (1781 – c. 1837), in which one character begins to relate a story in which a boy slips down from a cork tree, and another interrupts him to say that he had previously repeated the story many times, and always mentioned a chestnut tree. The adjective is probably from an attributive use of the noun; compare French (of hair) châtain (“chestnut”) (from châtaigne (“a chestnut”)) and marron (“brown”) (from marron (“a horse chestnut or chestnut”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cchestnut,cehstnut,chesntut,chesstnut,chestnnut,chestntu,chestnutt,chesttnut,chestunt,chetsnut,chhestnut,chsetnut,hcestnut
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of chestnut - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “chestnut”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-H-E-S-T-N-U-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)nʌt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- 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.