grain
/ɡɹeɪn/
"grain" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“grain” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,329 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #5,329
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The harvested seeds of various grass food crops eg: wheat, corn, barley.
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 | grain |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡɹeɪn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,329 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “grain” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for grain is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡɹeɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,329 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 19 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 grain, with forms such as "garin", "ggrain", and "grainn". 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, "gray", "grid", "grip", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English greyn, grayn, grein, from Old French grain, grein, from Latin grānum (“seed”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm (“grain”). Doublet of corn, gram, granum, and grao. The correct English form is grain, spelled G-R-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1The harvested seeds of various grass food crops eg: wheat, corn, barley.
- 2Similar seeds from any food crop, e.g., buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa.
- 3A single seed of grass food crops.
- 4The crops from which grain is harvested.
- 5A linear texture of a material or surface.
- 6A single particle of a substance.
- 7Any of various small units of mass originally notionally based on grain's weight, variously standardized at different places and times, including
- 8Any of various small units of mass originally notionally based on grain's weight, variously standardized at different places and times, including
- 9Any of various small units of mass originally notionally based on grain's weight, variously standardized at different places and times, including
- 10Any of various small units of length originally notionally based on a grain's width, variously standardized at different places and times.
- 11The carat grain of ¹⁄₄ carat as a measure of gold purity, creating a 96-point scale between 0% and 100% purity.
- 12A region within a material having a single crystal structure or direction.
- 13The solid piece of fuel in an individual solid-fuel rocket engine.
- 14A reddish dye made from the coccus insect, or kermes; hence, a red color of any tint or hue, as crimson, scarlet, etc.; sometimes used by the poets as equivalent to Tyrian purple.
- 15The hair side of a piece of leather, or the marking on that side.
- 16The remains of grain, etc., after brewing or distillation; hence, any residuum.
- 17A rounded prominence on the back of a sepal, as in the common dock.
- 18Temper; natural disposition; inclination.
- 19Visual texture in processed photographic film due to the presence of small particles of a metallic silver, or dye clouds, developed from silver halide that have received enough photons.
Etymology
From Middle English greyn, grayn, grein, from Old French grain, grein, from Latin grānum (“seed”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm (“grain”). Doublet of corn, gram, granum, and grao.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: garin,ggrain,grainn,grani,grian,grrain,rgain
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of grain - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “grain”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-R-A-I-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡɹeɪn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “gray” - see the side-by-side comparison. grain vs gray
- 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.