coast
/kəʊst/
"coast" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“coast” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,420 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,420
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The edge of the land where it meets an ocean, sea, gulf, bay, or large lake.
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 | coast |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kəʊst/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,420 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “coast” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for coast is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kəʊst/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,420 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for coast, with forms such as "caost", "ccoast", and "coasst". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "cos", "cot", "CST", 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 coste (“rib; side of the body, flank; side of a building; face of a solid figure; coast, shore; bay, gulf; sea; concavity, hollow; boundary, limit; land; country; district, province, region; locality, place; division of the heavens; comp… The correct English form is coast, spelled C-O-A-S-T.
Definition
- 1The edge of the land where it meets an ocean, sea, gulf, bay, or large lake.
- 2The side or edge of something.
- 3A region of land; a district or country.
- 4A region of the air or heavens.
Etymology
From Middle English coste (“rib; side of the body, flank; side of a building; face of a solid figure; coast, shore; bay, gulf; sea; concavity, hollow; boundary, limit; land; country; district, province, region; locality, place; division of the heavens; compass direction; direction; location with reference to direction, side”) [and other forms], from Old French coste (“rib; side of an object; coast”) (modern French côte (“rib; coast; hill, slope”)), from Latin costa (“rib; side, wall”). Doublet of costa. Compare typologically cape < Latin caput, ness (akin to nose), Bulgarian нос (nos, “nose; …; cape, promontory, foreland, gore”), Macedonian ’рт (’rt), Serbo-Croatian рт (“cape, promontory, headland”) < Proto-Slavic *rъtъ (whence Russian рот (rot)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: caost,ccoast,coasst,coastt,cosat,ocast
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of coast - 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 “coast”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-O-A-S-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kəʊst/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “cos” - see the side-by-side comparison. coast vs cos
- 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.