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PlainSpell

chief

/t͡ʃiːf/noun, adjective, verb

chief is spelled C-H-I-E-F. The wrong spelling people search most is cheif: about 1,960 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Chief is a noun meaning “The leader or head of a tribe, organisation, business unit, or other group”. The plural of chief is chiefs.

How many letters and syllables are in chief?

Letters5: C-H-I-E-F
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing129 times per million words; the 810th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, cheif, about 1,960 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Same letters

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 do you spell chief?

Chief is spelled C-H-I-E-F. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for chief in either form.

chiefthe right spelling8,250 searches a month
cheifi and e swapped1,960 searches a month

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). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is chief?

Chief appears 129 times per million words in written English, the 810th 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 chief?

  • /t͡ʃiːf/

Chief 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-chief.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-chief.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with chief?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as chief.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: fiche.

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 chief

  • chiefs plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • chiefer comparative
  • more chief comparative
  • chiefest superlative
  • most chief superlative
  • chiefing participle, present
  • chiefed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does chief mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The leader or head of a tribe, organisation, business unit, or other group.

    All firefighters report to the fire chief.

  2. 2

    Headship, the status of being a chief or leader.

    Bob is our troubleshooter in chief.

  3. 3

    The top part of a shield or escutcheon; more specifically, an ordinary consisting of the upper part of the field cut off by a horizontal line, generally occupying the top third.

  4. 4

    The principal part or top of anything.

  5. 5

    An informal term of address.

  6. 6

    offensiveAn informal term of address for a Native American or First Nations man.

adjective

  1. 1

    Primary; principal.

    Negligence was the chief cause of the disaster.

  2. 2

    ScotlandIntimate, friendly.

verb

  1. 1

    slangTo smoke cannabis.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Chief in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchchef (leader of group, etc)
GermanHäuptling, Oberhaupt (leader of group, etc), Chef, Boss (head of an organization), Schildhaupt (heraldic term), hauptsächlich (primary; principal)
Portuguesechefe, líder (leader of group, etc), manda-chuva (head of an organization), principal (primary; principal)
Spanishjefe, cacique, curaca (leader of group, etc), principal (primary; principal)

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 chief come from?

Inherited from Middle English chef, borrowed from Old French chief, from Vulgar Latin capus, from Latin caput, from Proto-Italic *kaput, from Proto-Indo-European *káput, from *kap-, possibly from *kap-, possibly borrowed from a substrate language.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after chief