housing
/ˈhaʊzɪŋ/
"housing" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“housing” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,759 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,759
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 14
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The activity of enclosing something or providing a residence for someone.
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 | housing |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈhaʊzɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,759 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 14 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “housing” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for housing is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈhaʊzɪŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,759 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for housing, with forms such as "hhousing", "hosuing", and "houisng". 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 14 confusable-pair relationships, "howling", "hoping", "homing", 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 housynge, housinge, from housen (“to house, shelter; receive into one's house”), equivalent to house + -ing. Cognate with Scots housing (“housing”), Old Frisian hūsinge (whence Saterland Frisian Huzenge); compare also Dutch huizing, behu… The correct English form is housing, spelled H-O-U-S-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The activity of enclosing something or providing a residence for someone.
- 2Residences, collectively.
- 3A mechanical component's container or covering.
- 4A cover or cloth for a horse's saddle, as an ornamental or military appendage; a saddlecloth; a horse cloth; in plural, trappings.
- 5An appendage to the harness or collar of a harness.
- 6The space taken out of one solid to admit the insertion of part of another, such as the end of one timber in the side of another.
- 7A niche for a statue.
- 8That portion of a mast or bowsprit which is beneath the deck or within the vessel.
- 9A houseline.
Etymology
From Middle English housynge, housinge, from housen (“to house, shelter; receive into one's house”), equivalent to house + -ing. Cognate with Scots housing (“housing”), Old Frisian hūsinge (whence Saterland Frisian Huzenge); compare also Dutch huizing, behuizing (“housing”), Low German husing, hüsing (“housing”), German Behausung (“housing”), Swedish inhysing (“housing”).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhousing,hosuing,houisng,housign,housingg,housinng,housnig,houssing,huosing,ohusing
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of housing - 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 “housing”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-O-U-S-I-N-G - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈhaʊzɪŋ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “howling” - see the side-by-side comparison. housing vs howling
- 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.