chine
/t͡ʃaɪn/
"chine" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“chine” is an uncommon English word, ranked #51,609 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #51,609
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The top of a ridge.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | chine |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /t͡ʃaɪn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #51,609 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “chine” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for chine is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /t͡ʃaɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #51,609 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 edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for chine, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English chyne, from Old French eschine, from Frankish *skinu, from Proto-Germanic *skinō. Doublet of shin. The correct English form is chine, spelled C-H-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1The top of a ridge.
- 2The spine of an animal.
- 3A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
- 4A sharp angle in the cross section of a hull.
- 5A longitudinal line of sharp change in the cross-section profile of the fuselage or similar body.
- 6A hollowed or bevelled channel in the waterway of a ship's deck.
- 7The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.
- 8The back of the blade on a scythe.
Etymology
From Middle English chyne, from Old French eschine, from Frankish *skinu, from Proto-Germanic *skinō. Doublet of shin.
This word in other languages
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 “chine”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-H-I-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /t͡ʃaɪn/ (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.