cum
/kʌm/
"cum" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cum” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #6,672) as a preposition. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #6,672
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Used in indicating a thing or person which has two or more roles, functions, or natures, or which has changed from one to another.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cum · cum · English
cum · rank #6,672 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #6,672
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH creepy
Nearest frequency peer: creepy (-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.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “cum”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- counted
counted
93,332 corpus weight
- crashed
crashed
93,331 corpus weight
- creepy
creepy
93,330 corpus weight
- cum
cum
93,329 corpus weight
- Denmark
Denmark
93,328 corpus weight
- divorced
divorced
93,327 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “cum” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | cum |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Preposition |
| IPA | /kʌm/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #6,672 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “cum”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for cum is neighbouring look-alikes ("CV", "CW", …), not just typos; it is apreposition pronounced /kʌm/. Frequency #6,672 among 5,599 “C” headwords. Gloss: "Used in indicating a thing or person which has two or more roles, functions, or natures, or which has changed from one to another.".
No misspelling variants are generated for cum in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "CV", "CW", "CX", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Learned borrowing from Latin cum (“with”). The correct English form is cum, spelled C-U-M.
Definition
- 1Used in indicating a thing or person which has two or more roles, functions, or natures, or which has changed from one to another.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how cum appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He is too good an actor to need that sort of tomfoolery: the effect will be far better if he is a credible mining camp elder-cum-publican.
One driver-cum-fireman-cum-fitter looks after the three locomotives, [...].
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin cum (“with”).
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 "cum", not the corpus desk frequency band.