hay
/heɪ/
"hay" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hay” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,152 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #8,152
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.
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 | hay |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /heɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #8,152 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hay” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hay is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /heɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,152 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for hay in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "he", "hi", "HD", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją, from *hawwaną (“to hew, cut down”). Cognate with West Frisian hea (“hay”), Alemannic German Heuw (“hay”), Cimbrian höobe (“hay”), Dutch hooi (“hay”),… The correct English form is hay, spelled H-A-Y.
Definition
- 1Grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.
- 2Any mix of green leafy plants used for fodder.
- 3Cannabis; marijuana.
- 4A net set around the haunt of an animal, especially a rabbit.
Etymology
From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją, from *hawwaną (“to hew, cut down”). Cognate with West Frisian hea (“hay”), Alemannic German Heuw (“hay”), Cimbrian höobe (“hay”), Dutch hooi (“hay”), German Heu (“hay”), Luxembourgish Hee (“hay”), Mòcheno hei (“hay”), Yiddish היי (hey, “hay”), Danish hø (“hay”), Faroese hoyggj (“hay”), Gutnish hoy (“hay”), Icelandic hey (“hay”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk høy (“hay”), Swedish hö (“hay”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍅𐌹 (hawi, “grass, hay”). More at hew.
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 “hay”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-A-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /heɪ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “he” - see the side-by-side comparison. hay vs he
- 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.