ewe
/juː/
"ewe" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ewe” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #37,448 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #37,448
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A female sheep, as opposed to a ram.
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 | ewe |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /juː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #37,448 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ewe” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ewe is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /juː/. Corpus data places it at rank #37,448 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A female sheep, as opposed to a ram.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for ewe, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ex", "ey", "ez", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English ewe, from Old English eowu, from Proto-West Germanic *awi, from Proto-Germanic *awiz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ówis (“sheep”). Cognates See also Old English ēow (“sheep”), West Frisian ei, Dutch ooi, German Aue; also Old Irish oí, Lat… The correct English form is ewe, spelled E-W-E.
Definition
- 1A female sheep, as opposed to a ram.
Etymology
From Middle English ewe, from Old English eowu, from Proto-West Germanic *awi, from Proto-Germanic *awiz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ówis (“sheep”). Cognates See also Old English ēow (“sheep”), West Frisian ei, Dutch ooi, German Aue; also Old Irish oí, Latin ovis, Tocharian B ā(ᵤ)w, Lithuanian avi̇̀s (“ewe”), Russian овца́ (ovcá).
This word in other languages
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 “ewe”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is E-W-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /juː/ (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. ewe 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.