creek
/kɹiːk/
"creek" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“creek” has 7 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #3,805. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #3,805
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
Corpus desk
Index EN-creek · creek · English
creek · rank #3,805 · 7 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #3,805
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 7 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH cop
Nearest frequency peer: cop (-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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “creek”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- collect
collect
96,199 corpus weight
- commerce
commerce
96,198 corpus weight
- cop
cop
96,197 corpus weight
- creek
creek
96,196 corpus weight
- currency
currency
96,195 corpus weight
- emotions
emotions
96,194 corpus weight
What this shows “creek” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | creek |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kɹiːk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,805 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “creek”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 7 spelling variants around creek (IPA /kɹiːk/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #3,805 among 5,599 “C” headwords. Wiktionary lists 4 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for creek, with forms such as "ccreek", "cerek", and "creekk". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "crew", "cried", "cruel", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English crike, probably from Old Norse kriki, from Proto-Germanic *krikjô, variant of krekô, from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, to wind”); the modern form creek (already late Middle English creke) either reflects open-syllable lengthening… The correct English form is creek, spelled C-R-E-E-K.
Definition
- 1A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
- 2The inner part of a port that is used as a dock for small boats.
- 3A stream of water, typically a stream of freshwater smaller than a river; in Australia, also used of river-sized bodies of water.
- 4Any turn or winding.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how creek appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken any way you please, is bad, / And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks / No decent soul would think of visiting.
Etymology
From Middle English crike, probably from Old Norse kriki, from Proto-Germanic *krikjô, variant of krekô, from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, to wind”); the modern form creek (already late Middle English creke) either reflects open-syllable lengthening of Middle English /i/ or reborrowing from Middle Dutch krēke., Compare typologically English bight, akin to bend, bow. See also Old Dutch creka, crika (“inlet, cove, creek”), Medieval Latin creca, crica, kríkr (“angle, corner, nook, bay”), Old Norse kraki (“pole with a hook, anchor”), and possibly Old Norse krókr (“hook, bend, bight”). Modern cognates include West Frisian kreek (“creek”), Dutch kreek (“creek, cove, inlet, bight”), and French crique (“cove”) (borrowed from Germanic). Early British colonists of Australia and the Americas used the term in the usual British way, to name inlets; as settlements followed the inlets upstream and inland, the names were retained and creek came to be used to refer to any small waterway. A similar semantic development occurred in Dutch and French, where the word originally meant "bay" but came to mean "stream" especially in the French and Dutch colonies (French Guiana, Dutch Guiana and Indonesia).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ccreek
- cerek
- creekk
- crek
- creke
- crreek
- rceek
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of creek - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "creek", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (7 here; floor ≥5).