glee
/ɡliː/
"glee" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“glee” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #15,177 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #15,177
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune.
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 | glee |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡliː/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #15,177 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “glee” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for glee is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡliː/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,177 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for glee, with forms such as "gele", "gglee", and "gle". 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, "GRE", "GLO", "goes", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English gle, from Old English glēo, glīġ, glēow, glīw (“glee, pleasure, mirth, play, sport; music; mockery”), from Proto-West Germanic *glīw, from Proto-Germanic *glīwą (“joy, mirth”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰlew- (“to joke, make fun, enjoy”… The correct English form is glee, spelled G-L-E-E.
Definition
- 1Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune.
- 2Music; minstrelsy; entertainment.
- 3An unaccompanied part song for three or more solo voices, not necessarily merry.
Etymology
From Middle English gle, from Old English glēo, glīġ, glēow, glīw (“glee, pleasure, mirth, play, sport; music; mockery”), from Proto-West Germanic *glīw, from Proto-Germanic *glīwą (“joy, mirth”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰlew- (“to joke, make fun, enjoy”). Cognate with Scots gle, glie, glew (“game, play, sport, mirth, joy, rejoicing, entertainment, melody, music”), Icelandic glý (“joy, glee, gladness”), Ancient Greek χλεύη (khleúē, “joke, jest, scorn”). A poetic word in Middle English, the word was obsolete by 1500, but revived late 18c.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: gele,gglee,gle,gllee,lgee
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of glee - 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 “glee”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-L-E-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡliː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “GRE” - see the side-by-side comparison. glee vs GRE
- 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.