grass
/ɡɹɑːs/
"grass" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“grass” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,758 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,758
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Any plant of the family Poaceae, characterized by leaves that arise from nodes in the stem and leaf bases that wrap around the stem, especially those grown as ground cover rather than for grain.
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 | grass |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡɹɑːs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,758 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “grass” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for grass is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡɹɑːs/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,758 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 12 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 grass, with forms such as "garss", "ggrass", and "grrass". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "gray", "guess", "gross", 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 gras, from Old English græs, from Proto-West Germanic *gras, from Proto-Germanic *grasą (“grass”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰreh₁- (“to grow”). Cognates Cognate with Scots gress (“grass”), North Frisian gaars, geers, Gērs, gjars, gjas,… The correct English form is grass, spelled G-R-A-S-S.
Definition
- 1Any plant of the family Poaceae, characterized by leaves that arise from nodes in the stem and leaf bases that wrap around the stem, especially those grown as ground cover rather than for grain.
- 2Any of the various plants that are not in the family Poaceae that resemble grasses.
- 3A lawn.
- 4The outside world, especially in the phrase "touch grass".
- 5Marijuana.
- 6An informer, police informer; one who betrays a group (of criminals, etc) to the authorities.
- 7Sharp, closely spaced discontinuities in the trace of a cathode-ray tube, produced by random interference.
- 8Noise on an A-scope or similar type of radar display.
- 9The season of fresh grass; spring or summer.
- 10That which is transitory.
- 11Asparagus; "sparrowgrass".
- 12The surface of a mine.
Etymology
From Middle English gras, from Old English græs, from Proto-West Germanic *gras, from Proto-Germanic *grasą (“grass”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰreh₁- (“to grow”). Cognates Cognate with Scots gress (“grass”), North Frisian gaars, geers, Gērs, gjars, gjas, gäärs (“grass”), Saterland Frisian Gäärs (“grass”), West Frisian gers (“grass”), Cimbrian gras, grass (“grass”), German and Luxembourgish Gras (“grass, weed”), Dutch gras (“grass, turf, pasture”), Mòcheno and Vilamovian gros (“grass”), West Flemish ges (“grass”), Yiddish גראָז (groz, “grass”), Danish græs (“grass”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Norwegian Nynorsk gras (“grass”), Norwegian Bokmål gras, gress (“grass”), Swedish gräs (“grass”), Gothic 𐌲𐍂𐌰𐍃 (gras, “herb”); also Latin herba (“plant, weed, grass”), Albanian grath (“grass blade, spike”). Related to grow, green. The "informer" sense is probably a shortening of grasshopper (“police officer, informant”), rhyming slang for copper (“police officer”) or shopper (“informant”); the exact sequence of derivation is unclear.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: garss,ggrass,grrass,grsas,rgass
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of grass - 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 “grass”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-R-A-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡɹɑːs/ (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. grass 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.