clown
/klaʊn/
"clown" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“clown” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,896 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,896
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A slapstick performance artist often associated with a circus and usually characterized by bright, oversized clothing, a red nose, face paint, and a brightly colored wig.
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 | clown |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /klaʊn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,896 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “clown” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for clown is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /klaʊn/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,896 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for clown, with forms such as "cclown", "cllown", and "clonw". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "con", "cow", "coin", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From earlier clowne, cloyne (“man of rustic or coarse manners, boor, peasant”); likely of North Germanic origin, akin to Icelandic klunni (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Swedish kluns (“clumsy fellow”), all from Middle Low German klunz, from klunt (“pile, lump, s… The correct English form is clown, spelled C-L-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1A slapstick performance artist often associated with a circus and usually characterized by bright, oversized clothing, a red nose, face paint, and a brightly colored wig.
- 2A person who acts in a silly fashion.
- 3A stupid person.
- 4A man of coarse nature and manners; an awkward fellow; an illbred person; a boor.
- 5One who works upon the soil; a rustic; a churl; a yokel.
- 6A clownfish.
Etymology
From earlier clowne, cloyne (“man of rustic or coarse manners, boor, peasant”); likely of North Germanic origin, akin to Icelandic klunni (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Swedish kluns (“clumsy fellow”), all from Middle Low German klunz, from klunt (“pile, lump, something thick”); according to Pokorny, this could be related to a group of Germanic derivatives of Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to ball up; amass”), such as Proto-West Germanic *klott (“lump”), Proto-Germanic *klūtaz (“clod, lump”), *kultaz (“lump, bundle”), etc. Alternatively, directly from Low German (compare North Frisian klönne (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Dutch kluns (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Dutch kloen (“uncouth person, lout”)), themselves from the same ultimate source as above. Unlikely from Latin colōnus (“colonist, farmer”), although learned awareness of this term may have influenced semantic development.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cclown,cllown,clonw,clownn,clowwn,clwon,colwn,lcown
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of clown - 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
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Using “clown”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-L-O-W-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /klaʊn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “con” - see the side-by-side comparison. clown vs con
- 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.