eng
/ɛŋ/
"eng" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“eng” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #11,885) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #11,885
- frequency rank, English
- 2,246
- “E” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Narrow.
Corpus desk
Index EN-eng · eng · English
eng · rank #11,885 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #11,885
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,246
- PHOTO-FINISH earnest
Nearest frequency peer: earnest (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “eng”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- dreadful
dreadful
88,119 corpus weight
- drunken
drunken
88,118 corpus weight
- earnest
earnest
88,117 corpus weight
- eng
eng
88,116 corpus weight
- erase
erase
88,115 corpus weight
- evacuated
evacuated
88,114 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “eng” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | eng |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ɛŋ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #11,885 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “eng”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for eng is neighbouring look-alikes ("ex", "et", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced /ɛŋ/. Frequency #11,885 among 2,246 “E” headwords. Gloss: "Narrow.".
eng doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ex", "et", "EU", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Probably from Dutch eng (“narrow”), also compare Old English enge (“narrow”), from Proto-West Germanic *angī, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *anguz. No mention of the word is found in any surviving Middle English text, save for the Middle English compound w… The correct English form is eng, spelled E-N-G.
Definition
- 1Narrow.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how eng appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The hole was too eng for him to get through.
Etymology
Probably from Dutch eng (“narrow”), also compare Old English enge (“narrow”), from Proto-West Germanic *angī, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *anguz. No mention of the word is found in any surviving Middle English text, save for the Middle English compound word ang-nail. Related to Dutch eng (“narrow”), German eng (“narrow”), Low German enj (“confined, narrow”), Luxembourgish enk (“narrow”).
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "eng", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).