distribution
/ˌdɪstɹəˈbjuːʃən/
"distribution" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“distribution” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,290 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,290
- frequency rank, English
- 12
- letters
- 19
- tracked misspellings
- 3
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An act of distributing or state of being distributed.
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 | distribution |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌdɪstɹəˈbjuːʃən/ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #2,290 |
| Misspellings tracked | 19 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “distribution” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for distribution is 12 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌdɪstɹəˈbjuːʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,290 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 19 likely wrong-spelling variants for distribution, with forms such as "ddistribution", "disrtibution", and "disstribution". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "distributor", "distributive", "distributing", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Old French, from Latin distributio, from distribuere 'to distribute', itself from dis- 'apart' + tribuere 'to' (from tribus). By surface analysis, distribute + -ion. The correct English form is distribution, spelled D-I-S-T-R-I-B-U-T-I-O-N.
Definition
- 1An act of distributing or state of being distributed.
- 2An apportionment by law (of funds, property).
- 3The process by which goods get to final consumers over a geographical market, including storing, selling, shipping and advertising.
- 4Anything distributed; portion; share.
- 5The result of distributing; arrangement.
- 6The total number of something sold or delivered to the clients.
- 7The frequency of occurrence or extent of existence.
- 8The apportionment of income or wealth in a population.
- 9The way in which a player's hand is divided in suits, or in which a particular suit is divided between the players.
- 10A probability distribution; the set of relative likelihoods that a variable will have a value in a given interval.
- 11A subset of the tangent bundle of a manifold that satisfies certain properties; used to construct the notions of integrability and foliation of a manifold.
- 12A set of bundled software components.
- 13The process or result of the sale of securities, especially their placement among investors with long-term investment strategies.
- 14The resolution of a whole into its parts.
- 15The process of sorting the types and placing them in their proper boxes in the cases.
- 16The steps or operations by which steam is supplied to and withdrawn from the cylinder at each stroke of the piston: admission, suppression or cutting off, release or exhaust, and compression of exhaust steam prior to the next admission.
- 17A rhetorical technique in which a subject is divided into multiple cases based on some property or properties, and each case is addressed individually.
Etymology
From Old French, from Latin distributio, from distribuere 'to distribute', itself from dis- 'apart' + tribuere 'to' (from tribus). By surface analysis, distribute + -ion.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddistribution,disrtibution,disstribution,distirbution,distrbiution,distribbution,distribtuion,distribuiton,distribusion,distributino,distributionn,distributoin,distributtion,distriubtion,distrribution,disttribution,ditsribution,dsitribution,idstribution
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of distribution - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “distribution”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-I-S-T-R-I-B-U-T-I-O-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˌdɪstɹəˈbjuːʃən/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “distributor” - see the side-by-side comparison. distribution vs distributor
- 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.