creek
/kɹiːk/
"creek" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“creek” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,805 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,805
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
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) |
Where “creek” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for creek is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɹiːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,805 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 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.
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
How do you spell "creek"?
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Using “creek”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-R-E-E-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kɹiːk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “crew” - see the side-by-side comparison. creek vs crew
- 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.