creak
/kɹiːk/
"creak" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“creak” is uncommon English (frequency #51,636 among 5,599 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #51,636
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
Corpus desk
Index EN-creak · creak · English
creak · rank #51,636 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #51,636
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH creditable
Nearest frequency peer: creditable (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Long-tail ranks near “creak”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- copolymer
copolymer
48,370 corpus weight
- crags
crags
48,367 corpus weight
- creak
creak
48,365 corpus weight
- creditable
creditable
48,364 corpus weight
- cringey
cringey
48,363 corpus weight
- curatorial
curatorial
48,361 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “creak” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | creak |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kɹiːk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #51,636 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “creak” in English
Rare enough to double-check
creak is uncommon English at frequency #51,636 among 5,599 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /kɹiːk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.".
creak has no tracked misspelling variants, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English creken, criken, metathesis of Old English cearcian (“to chatter, creak, crash, gnash”), from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn (“to crash, crack, creak”), from Proto-Germanic *krakōną, from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to make a sound, cry ho… The correct English form is creak, spelled C-R-E-A-K.
Definition
- 1The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
Etymology
From Middle English creken, criken, metathesis of Old English cearcian (“to chatter, creak, crash, gnash”), from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn (“to crash, crack, creak”), from Proto-Germanic *krakōną, from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to make a sound, cry hoarsely”), ultimately of imitative origin. Compare also Old English crǣccettan, crācettan (“to croak”), Albanian grykë (“throat”). More at crack.
This word in other languages
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "creak", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).