hound
/haʊnd/
"hound" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hound” has 7 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #16,494. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #16,494
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hound · hound · English
hound · rank #16,494 · 7 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,494
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 7 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH hostel
Nearest frequency peer: hostel (-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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “hound”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- horrendous
horrendous
83,510 corpus weight
- horrified
horrified
83,509 corpus weight
- hostel
hostel
83,508 corpus weight
- hound
hound
83,507 corpus weight
- hugged
hugged
83,505 corpus weight
- illegitimate
illegitimate
83,504 corpus weight
What this shows “hound” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | hound |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /haʊnd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #16,494 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “hound”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 7 spelling variants around hound (IPA /haʊnd/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #16,494 among 2,646 “H” headwords. Wiktionary lists 6 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for hound, with forms such as "hhound", "honud", and "houdn". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hun", "HUD", "hour", 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 hound, from Old English hund, from Proto-West Germanic *hund, from Proto-Germanic *hundaz, from pre-Germanic *ḱuntós (compare Latvian sùnt-ene (“big dog”), enlargement of Proto-Indo-European *ḱwṓ (“dog”). Doublet of canine. In 14th-centu… The correct English form is hound, spelled H-O-U-N-D.
Definition
- 1A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
- 2Any canine animal.
- 3Someone who seeks something.
- 4A male who constantly seeks the company of desirable women.
- 5A despicable person.
- 6A houndfish.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hound appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
On the way out of the building I was asked for my autograph. If I'd known who the signature hound thought I was, I would've signed appropriately.
I still do not know if he's taken on this case because he's a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna.
Etymology
From Middle English hound, from Old English hund, from Proto-West Germanic *hund, from Proto-Germanic *hundaz, from pre-Germanic *ḱuntós (compare Latvian sùnt-ene (“big dog”), enlargement of Proto-Indo-European *ḱwṓ (“dog”). Doublet of canine. In 14th-century England, hound was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype resembling the modern mastiff and bulldog. By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to breeds used for hunting.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- hhound
- honud
- houdn
- houndd
- hounnd
- huond
- ohund
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of hound - 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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "hound", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (7 here; floor ≥5).