hake
/heɪk/
"hake" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hake” is uncommon English (frequency #58,064 among 23,837 “H” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #58,064
- frequency rank, English
- 23,837
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A hook; a pot-hook.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hake |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /heɪk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #58,064 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hake” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
hake is uncommon English at frequency #58,064 among 23,837 “H” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /heɪk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for hake in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English *hake, from Old English hæca, haca (“hook, bolt, door-fastening, bar”), from Proto-West Germanic *hakō, from Proto-Germanic *hakô (“hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *keg-, *keng- (“peg, hook”). Related to hook. Cognates Cognate with Dutc… The correct English form is hake, spelled H-A-K-E.
Definition
- 1A hook; a pot-hook.
- 2A kind of weapon; a pike.
- 3(in the plural) The draught-irons of a plough.
Etymology
From Middle English *hake, from Old English hæca, haca (“hook, bolt, door-fastening, bar”), from Proto-West Germanic *hakō, from Proto-Germanic *hakô (“hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *keg-, *keng- (“peg, hook”). Related to hook. Cognates Cognate with Dutch haak (“hook”), German Haken (“hook”), Danish hage (“hook”), Swedish hake (“hook”), Icelandic haki (“hook”), Hittite [Term?] (/kagas/, “tooth”), Middle Irish chaing (“weapons rack”), Lithuanian kéngė (“hook, latch”), Russian ко́готь (kógotʹ, “claw”).
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 “hake”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-A-K-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /heɪk/ (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
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.