glum
/ɡlʌm/
"glum" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“glum” is an uncommon English word, ranked #51,727 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #51,727
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Despondent; moody; sullen.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | glum |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ɡlʌm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #51,727 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “glum” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for glum is 4 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡlʌm/. Corpus data places it at rank #51,727 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Despondent; moody; sullen.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for glum, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: Probably from Middle Low German glum (“glum”), related to German dialectal glumm (“gloomy, troubled, turbid”). More at gloomy. The correct English form is glum, spelled G-L-U-M.
Definition
- 1Despondent; moody; sullen.
Etymology
Probably from Middle Low German glum (“glum”), related to German dialectal glumm (“gloomy, troubled, turbid”). More at gloomy.
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 “glum”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-L-U-M - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡlʌm/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- 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.