cleaves
/kliːvz/
"cleaves" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cleaves” is uncommon English (frequency #55,329 among 5,599 “C” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #55,329
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - third-person singular simple present indicative of cleave
Corpus desk
Index EN-cleaves · cleaves · English
cleaves · rank #55,329 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #55,329
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH cloudless
Nearest frequency peer: cloudless (+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.
Long-tail ranks near “cleaves”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- chinaman
chinaman
44,677 corpus weight
- choline
choline
44,676 corpus weight
- circumspect
circumspect
44,674 corpus weight
- cleaves
cleaves
44,672 corpus weight
- cloudless
cloudless
44,671 corpus weight
- colada
colada
44,668 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “cleaves” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cleaves |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /kliːvz/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #55,329 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “cleaves” in English
Rare enough to double-check
cleaves is uncommon English at frequency #55,329 among 5,599 “C” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed /kliːvz/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "third-person singular simple present indicative of cleave".
No generated misspelling entries exist for cleaves in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is cleaves, spelled C-L-E-A-V-E-S.
Definition
- 1third-person singular simple present indicative of cleave
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "cleaves", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).