glade
/ɡleɪd/
"glade" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“glade” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #37,941 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #37,941
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An open passage through a wood; a grassy open or cleared space in a forest.
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 | glade |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡleɪd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #37,941 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “glade” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for glade is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡleɪd/. Corpus data places it at rank #37,941 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for glade, with forms such as "galde", "gglade", and "gladde". 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, "glue", "grad", "glee", 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 glade, glode, glede (“a gleam of light, bright space, an open space; an open or cleared space in a forest; a bright patch of sky; a bright surface of snow or ice”), of uncertain origin, perhaps from Old English *glǣd, *glād, related to O… The correct English form is glade, spelled G-L-A-D-E.
Definition
- 1An open passage through a wood; a grassy open or cleared space in a forest.
- 2An everglade.
- 3An open space in the ice on a river or lake.
- 4A bright surface of ice or snow.
- 5A gleam of light.
- 6A bright patch of sky; the bright space between clouds.
Etymology
From Middle English glade, glode, glede (“a gleam of light, bright space, an open space; an open or cleared space in a forest; a bright patch of sky; a bright surface of snow or ice”), of uncertain origin, perhaps from Old English *glǣd, *glād, related to Old English glæd (“shining, bright”), (compare Old Norse glaðr (“bright”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: galde,gglade,gladde,glaed,gldae,gllade,lgade
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of glade - 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 “glade”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-L-A-D-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡleɪd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “glue” - see the side-by-side comparison. glade vs glue
- 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.