dup
/dʌp/
"dup" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“dup” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #28,177) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #28,177
- frequency rank, English
- 26,416
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - to open (a door, gate etc.)
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 | dup |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /dʌp/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #28,177 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “dup” sits in English frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for dup is neighbouring look-alikes ("dw", "Dx", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced /dʌp/. Frequency #28,177 among 26,416 “D” headwords. Gloss: "to open (a door, gate etc.)".
dup doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "dw", "Dx", "DV", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English don up (“to open”), equivalent to a blend of do + up. Compare don, doff, dout, dub. The correct English form is dup, spelled D-U-P.
Definition
- 1to open (a door, gate etc.)
Etymology
From Middle English don up (“to open”), equivalent to a blend of do + up. Compare don, doff, dout, dub.
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 “dup”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-U-P - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /dʌp/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “dw” - see the side-by-side comparison. dup vs dw
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Words at a similar English frequency
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.