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PlainSpell

clothes

/kloʊ(ð)z/noun, verb

clothes is spelled C-L-O-T-H-E-S: 7 letters and one syllable. It appears 52 times per million words in written English, the 1,941st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “cloth vs clothes” about 10 times a month (Bing, United States). As a noun, clothes means “Items of clothing; apparel” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).

How many letters and syllables are in clothes?

Letters7: C-L-O-T-H-E-S
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing52 times per million words; the 1,941st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Sounds like
Rhymes with

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 common is clothes?

Clothes appears 52 times per million words in written English, the 1,941st 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 clothes?

  • UK /kləʊ(ð)z/
  • US /kloʊ(ð)z/
  • /klo(ð)z/

As a verb: /kləʊðz/, /kloʊðz/.

Clothes 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-uk-clothes.ogg, En-us-clothes.ogg, En-us-clothes-2.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with clothes

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

cloth vs clothes10 B
close vs clothes0 B

Sounds like: cloze (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with clothes?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as clothes from its last stressed vowel (/oʊz/):

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).

What does clothes mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    Items of clothing; apparel.

    suit of clothes.

  2. 2

    obsoleteplural of cloth. (a form of cloth)

  3. 3

    The covering of a bed; bedclothes.

  4. 4

    Laundry (hung on a clothesline).

verb

  1. 1

    third-person singular simple present indicative of clothe (a form of clothe)

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

Clothes in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense apparel:

LanguageWords
Frenchvêtements, fringues
GermanKleider, Kleidung, Anziehsachen, Klamotten, Gewand
Portugueseroupa, vestuário
Spanishropa, trapos

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 clothes come from?

From Middle English clothes, cloþes (plural of cloth, cloþ (“cloth, garment”)), from Old English clāþas (“clothes”, plural of clāþ (“cloth”)), equivalent to cloth + -es. Cognate with Scots clathes, claes (“clothes”), Dutch klederen, kleren (“clothes”), German Kleider (“clothes”), Danish klæder (“clothes”), Swedish kläder (“clothes”), Norwegian Bokmål klær (“clothes”), Norwegian Nynorsk klede (“clothes”), Faroese klæði, klæðir (“clothes”).

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

What to look up after clothes