holt
/hɒlt/
"holt" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“holt” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #11,721 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #11,721
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A small piece of woodland or a woody hill; a copse.
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 | holt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɒlt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #11,721 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “holt” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for holt is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɒlt/. Corpus data places it at rank #11,721 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for holt, with forms such as "hholt", "hlot", and "hollt". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "how", "hot", "hop", 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 holt, from Old English holt (“forest, wood, grove, thicket; wood, timber”), from Proto-West Germanic *holt, from Proto-Germanic *hultą (“wood”), from Proto-Indo-European *kald-, *klād- (“timber, log”), from Proto-Indo-European *kola-, *k… The correct English form is holt, spelled H-O-L-T.
Definition
- 1A small piece of woodland or a woody hill; a copse.
- 2The lair of an animal, especially of an otter.
Etymology
From Middle English holt, from Old English holt (“forest, wood, grove, thicket; wood, timber”), from Proto-West Germanic *holt, from Proto-Germanic *hultą (“wood”), from Proto-Indo-European *kald-, *klād- (“timber, log”), from Proto-Indo-European *kola-, *klā- (“to beat, hew, break, destroy, kill”). Cognate with Scots holt (“a wood, copse, thicket”), North Frisian holt (“wood, timber”), West Frisian hout (“timber, wood”), Dutch hout (“wood, timber”), German Holz (“wood”), Icelandic holt (“woodland, hillock”), Old Irish caill (“forest, wood, woodland”), Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos, “branch, shoot, twig”), Slovene kol ("stake"), Albanian shul (“door latch”). Doublet of hout.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hholt,hlot,hollt,holtt,hotl,ohlt
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of holt - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “holt”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-O-L-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /hɒlt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “how” - see the side-by-side comparison. holt vs how
- 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.