gore
/ɡɔː/
"gore" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“gore” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #10,373 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #10,373
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 3
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Blood, especially that from a wound when thickened due to exposure to the air.
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 | gore |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡɔː/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #10,373 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “gore” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for gore is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡɔː/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,373 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 3 likely wrong-spelling variants for gore, with forms such as "ggore", "gorre", and "groe". 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, "GR", "got", "GRE", 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 gore, gor, gorre (“mud, muck”), from Old English gor (“manure, dung, filth, muck, dirt”), from Proto-West Germanic *gor, from Proto-Germanic *gurą (“half-digested stomach contents; faeces; manure”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰer- (“hot… The correct English form is gore, spelled G-O-R-E.
Definition
- 1Blood, especially that from a wound when thickened due to exposure to the air.
- 2A gout or mass of such blood.
- 3Carnage, bloodshed, murder, violence.
- 4Dirt, filth, often dung or mud.
Etymology
From Middle English gore, gor, gorre (“mud, muck”), from Old English gor (“manure, dung, filth, muck, dirt”), from Proto-West Germanic *gor, from Proto-Germanic *gurą (“half-digested stomach contents; faeces; manure”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰer- (“hot; warm”). Cognate to Old Norse gorr, gor (“intestines, (half-digested) intestinal contents, filth, dung; peat, silt-esc earth”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ggore,gorre,groe
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of gore - 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 “gore”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-O-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡɔː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “GR” - see the side-by-side comparison. gore vs GR
- 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.