clothing
/ˈkləʊðɪŋ/
"clothing" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“clothing” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,155 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #3,155
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 13
- tracked misspellings
- 10
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - present participle and gerund of clothe
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | clothing |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈkləʊðɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #3,155 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 10 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “clothing” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for clothing is 8 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkləʊðɪŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,155 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "present participle and gerund of clothe".
Our generated misspelling index lists 13 likely wrong-spelling variants for clothing, with forms such as "cclothing", "cllothing", and "clohting". 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 also participates in 10 confusable-pair relationships, "clotting", "clowning", "clouding", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English clothing, clathing; equivalent to clothe + -ing. Cognate with Scots cleeding, cleiding, cleading (“clothing”), Dutch kleding (“clothing”), German Kleidung (“clothing”), Danish klædning (“clothing, dress, attire”), Swedish klädning (“dres… The correct English form is clothing, spelled C-L-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1present participle and gerund of clothe
Etymology
From Middle English clothing, clathing; equivalent to clothe + -ing. Cognate with Scots cleeding, cleiding, cleading (“clothing”), Dutch kleding (“clothing”), German Kleidung (“clothing”), Danish klædning (“clothing, dress, attire”), Swedish klädning (“dress”). Doublet of the dialectal English term cleading, from Middle English clething; compare also cladding.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cclothing,cllothing,clohting,clothhing,clothign,clothingg,clothinng,clothnig,clotihng,clotthing,cltohing,colthing,lcothing
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of clothing - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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
How do you spell "clothing"?
What does "clothing" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "clothing"?
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Using “clothing”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-L-O-T-H-I-N-G - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈkləʊðɪŋ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “clotting” - see the side-by-side comparison. clothing vs clotting
- 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.