donkey

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for donkey is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdɒŋki/. Corpus data places it at rank #12,581 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for donkey, with forms such as "ddonkey", "dnokey", and "dokney". 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 14 confusable-pair relationships, "Donny", "Donne", "dorky", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

Etymologically, the entry records: The origin is uncertain. Originally a slang term from the late eighteenth century. Perhaps from Middle English *donekie (“a miniature dun horse”), a double diminutive of Middle English don, dun, dunne (a name for a dun horse), equivalent to modern English d… The correct English form is donkey, spelled D-O-N-K-E-Y.