dem
/dɛm/
"dem" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“dem” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,533 in English word frequency and used as a pronoun.
- #8,533
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Nonstandard form of them.
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 | dem |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pronoun |
| IPA | /dɛm/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #8,533 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “dem” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dem is 3 letters long, classified as a pronoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɛm/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,533 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Nonstandard form of them.".
dem doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "do", "Dr", "di", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is dem, spelled D-E-M.
Definition
- 1Nonstandard form of them.
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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Using “dem”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-E-M - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /dɛm/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “do” - see the side-by-side comparison. dem vs do
- 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.