heed
/hiːd/
"heed" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“heed” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,041) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #16,041
- frequency rank, English
- 23,837
- “H” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Careful attention.
Corpus desk
Index EN-heed · heed · English
heed · rank #16,041 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,041
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 23,837
- PHOTO-FINISH hamburger
Nearest frequency peer: hamburger (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbourhood for “heed”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- grooming
grooming
83,963 corpus weight
- hacks
hacks
83,962 corpus weight
- hamburger
hamburger
83,961 corpus weight
- heed
heed
83,960 corpus weight
- hideous
hideous
83,959 corpus weight
- hoops
hoops
83,957 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “heed” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | heed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hiːd/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #16,041 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “heed” sits in English frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for heed is neighbouring look-alikes ("her", "hey", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /hiːd/. Frequency #16,041 among 23,837 “H” headwords. Gloss: "Careful attention.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for heed, with forms such as "ehed", "hede", and "heedd". 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, "her", "hey", "hes", 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 heden, from Old English hēdan (“to heed, take care, observe, attend, guard, take charge, take possession, receive”), from Proto-West Germanic *hōdijan (“to heed, guard”), from Proto-Indo-European *kadʰ- (“to heed, protect”). Cognate with… The correct English form is heed, spelled H-E-E-D.
Definition
- 1Careful attention.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how heed appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Then for a few minutes I did not pay much heed to what was said, being terribly straitened for room, and cramped with pain from lying so long in one place.
Etymology
From Middle English heden, from Old English hēdan (“to heed, take care, observe, attend, guard, take charge, take possession, receive”), from Proto-West Germanic *hōdijan (“to heed, guard”), from Proto-Indo-European *kadʰ- (“to heed, protect”). Cognate with West Frisian hoedje (“to heed”), Dutch hoeden (“to heed”), German hüten (“to heed”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ehed
- hede
- heedd
- hheed
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of heed - 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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "heed", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency 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.