floss
/flɒs/
"floss" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“floss” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #22,974 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #22,974
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A thread used to clean the gaps between the teeth.
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 | floss |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /flɒs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #22,974 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “floss” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for floss is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /flɒs/. Corpus data places it at rank #22,974 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for floss, with forms such as "ffloss", "flloss", and "flos". 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, "flow", "fuss", "foes", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: Unclear: * Possibly from French floche (“tuft of wool”), from floc, from Old French flosche (“down, velvet”), from Latin floccus (“piece of wool”), probably from Frankish *flokkō (“down, wool, flock”), from Proto-Germanic *flukkô (“down, piece of wool, floc… The correct English form is floss, spelled F-L-O-S-S.
Definition
- 1A thread used to clean the gaps between the teeth.
- 2Raw silk fibres.
- 3The fibres covering a corncob etc.; the loose downy or silky material inside the husks of certain plants, such as beans.
- 4Any thread-like material having parallel strands that are not spun or wound around each other.
- 5Spun sugar or cotton candy, especially in the phrase "candy floss".
- 6A body feather of an ostrich.
- 7A dance move in which the dancer repeatedly swings their arms, with clenched fists, from the back of their body to the front, on each side.
Etymology
Unclear: * Possibly from French floche (“tuft of wool”), from floc, from Old French flosche (“down, velvet”), from Latin floccus (“piece of wool”), probably from Frankish *flokkō (“down, wool, flock”), from Proto-Germanic *flukkô (“down, piece of wool, flock”), from Proto-Indo-European *plewk- (“hair, fibres, tuft”). * Or, from Middle English *flos (attested in Middle English Flosmonger (a surname)), from Proto-West Germanic *fleus, related to English fleece. Cognate with Old High German flocko (“down”), Middle Dutch vlocke (“flock”), Norwegian dialectal flugsa (“snowflake”), Dutch flos (“plush”) (tr=17c.).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ffloss,flloss,flos,flsos,folss,lfoss
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of floss - 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 “floss”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is F-L-O-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /flɒs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “flow” - see the side-by-side comparison. floss vs flow
- 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.