courage
/ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/
"courage" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“courage” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #4,148 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #4,148
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 8
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
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 | courage |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #4,148 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 8 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “courage” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for courage is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,148 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for courage, with forms such as "ccourage", "coruage", and "couarge". 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 8 confusable-pair relationships, "course", "curate", "courant", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English corage, from Old French corage (French courage), from Vulgar Latin *corāticum, from Latin cor (“heart”). Distantly related to cardiac (“of the heart”), which is from Greek, but from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Displaced Middle Eng… The correct English form is courage, spelled C-O-U-R-A-G-E.
Definition
- 1The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
- 2The ability to overcome one's fear, do or live things which one finds frightening.
- 3The ability to maintain one's will or intent despite either the experience of fear, frailty, or frustration; or the occurrence of adversity, difficulty, defeat or reversal. Moral fortitude.
Etymology
From Middle English corage, from Old French corage (French courage), from Vulgar Latin *corāticum, from Latin cor (“heart”). Distantly related to cardiac (“of the heart”), which is from Greek, but from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Displaced Middle English elne, ellen, from Old English ellen (“courage, valor”).
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccourage,coruage,couarge,couraeg,couragge,courgae,courrage,cuorage,ocurage
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of courage - 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 “courage”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-O-U-R-A-G-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “course” - see the side-by-side comparison. courage vs course
- 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.