ere
/ɛə/
"ere" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ere” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #24,153 in English word frequency and used as an adverb.
- #24,153
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - At an earlier time.
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 | ere |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | /ɛə/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #24,153 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ere” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ere is 3 letters long, classified as an adverb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #24,153 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "At an earlier time.".
ere has no tracked misspelling variants, 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, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English er, from Old English ǣr (adverb, conjunction, and preposition), from Proto-West Germanic *airi, from Proto-Germanic *airiz, comparative of Proto-Germanic *airi (“early”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éyeri (“day, morning”) (compare Avesta… The correct English form is ere, spelled E-R-E.
Definition
- 1At an earlier time.
Etymology
From Middle English er, from Old English ǣr (adverb, conjunction, and preposition), from Proto-West Germanic *airi, from Proto-Germanic *airiz, comparative of Proto-Germanic *airi (“early”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éyeri (“day, morning”) (compare Avestan 𐬀𐬫𐬀𐬭 (ayar, “day”), Gk. ἠέριος (ēérios, “at daybreak”), see also era, Albanian herët (“early in the morning, at daybreak”) ). The adverb erstwhile retains the Old English superlative ǣrest (“earliest”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian eer (“before”), Dutch eer (“before, sooner than”), German ehe (“before”).
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 “ere”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is E-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɛə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “ex” - see the side-by-side comparison. ere vs ex
- 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.