de
/ˈdɛ/
"de" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“de” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #582) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #582
- frequency rank, English
- 3,470
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The name of the Cyrillic script letter Д / д.
Corpus desk
Index EN-de · de · English
de · rank #582 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #582
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,470
- PHOTO-FINISH wants
Nearest frequency peer: wants (-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 “de”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- thinking
thinking
99,422 corpus weight
- town
town
99,421 corpus weight
- wants
wants
99,420 corpus weight
- de
de
99,419 corpus weight
- department
department
99,418 corpus weight
- energy
energy
99,417 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “de” 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 | de |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈdɛ/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #582 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “de”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for de is neighbouring look-alikes ("do", "Dr", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /ˈdɛ/. Frequency #582 among 3,470 “D” headwords. Gloss: "The name of the Cyrillic script letter Д / д.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for de in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "do", "Dr", "di", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Russian дэ (dɛ). The correct English form is de, spelled D-E.
Definition
- 1The name of the Cyrillic script letter Д / д.
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian дэ (dɛ).
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.