drone
/dɹəʊn/
"drone" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“drone” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,127 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,127
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A male ant, bee, or wasp, which does not work but can fertilize the queen.
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 | drone |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /dɹəʊn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,127 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “drone” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for drone is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɹəʊn/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,127 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for drone, with forms such as "ddrone", "dorne", and "drnoe". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "drop", "dune", "drunk", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English drane, from Old English drān, from Proto-West Germanic *drānu, from Proto-Germanic *drēniz, *drēnuz, *drenô (“an insect, drone”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreh₁n- (“bee, drone, hornet”). Cognate with Danish drone (“drone”), Dutch dar (… The correct English form is drone, spelled D-R-O-N-E.
Definition
- 1A male ant, bee, or wasp, which does not work but can fertilize the queen.
- 2One who does not work; a lazy person, an idler.
- 3One who performs menial or tedious work.
- 4A remotely operated vehicle.
- 5A remotely operated vehicle.
- 6A Toyota HiAce or a similar van, especially one used by Ugandan state agents to kidnap opposition members.
- 7One who lacks the ability to think critically and independently, especially one who follows a group blindly; a non-player character.
- 8In dronification kink, one who is mindless and obedient to a dominant, characterized by a detached and robotic identity and an anonymous appearance, typically composed of a latex suit and gas mask.
Etymology
From Middle English drane, from Old English drān, from Proto-West Germanic *drānu, from Proto-Germanic *drēniz, *drēnuz, *drenô (“an insect, drone”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreh₁n- (“bee, drone, hornet”). Cognate with Danish drone (“drone”), Dutch dar (“male bee or wasp”), German Drohne, dialectal German Dräne, Trehne, Trene (“drone”), Low German drone (“drone”), Swedish drönje, drönare (“drone”). The etymology of the sense of "remote-controlled aircraft" is disputed; theories include early military UAVs dumbly flying on preset paths.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddrone,dorne,drnoe,droen,dronne,drrone,rdone
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of drone - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “drone”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-R-O-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /dɹəʊn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “drop” - see the side-by-side comparison. drone vs drop
- 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.