gender
/ˈd͡ʒɛndə/
"gender" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“gender” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,539 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,539
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Class; kind.
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 | gender |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈd͡ʒɛndə/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #2,539 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “gender” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for gender is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈd͡ʒɛndə/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,539 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for gender, with forms such as "egnder", "gedner", and "gendder". 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, "gene", "genre", "genes", 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 gendre, borrowed from Old French gendre, borrowed from Latin genere (“type, kind”). Doublet of genre and genus. The verb developed after the noun. The correct English form is gender, spelled G-E-N-D-E-R.
Definition
- 1Class; kind.
- 2Sex (a category, either male or female, into which sexually-reproducing organisms are divided on the basis of their reproductive roles in their species).
- 3Identification as a man, a woman, or something else, and association with a (social) role or set of behavioral and cultural traits, clothing, etc; a category to which a person belongs on this basis. (Compare gender role, gender identity.)
- 4A division of nouns and pronouns (and sometimes of other parts of speech) into masculine or feminine, and sometimes other categories like neuter or common, and animate or inanimate.
- 5Synonym of voice (“particular way of inflecting or conjugating verbs”).
- 6The quality which distinguishes connectors, which may be male (fitting into another connector) and female (having another connector fit into it), or genderless or androgynous (capable of fitting together with another connector of the same type).
Etymology
From Middle English gendre, borrowed from Old French gendre, borrowed from Latin genere (“type, kind”). Doublet of genre and genus. The verb developed after the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: egnder,gedner,gendder,genderr,gendre,genedr,gennder,ggender,gneder
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of gender - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “gender”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-E-N-D-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈd͡ʒɛndə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “gene” - see the side-by-side comparison. gender vs gene
- 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.