hulk
/hʌlk/
"hulk" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hulk” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #10,864 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #10,864
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre.
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 | hulk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hʌlk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #10,864 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hulk” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hulk is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hʌlk/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,864 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 5 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 hulk, with forms such as "hhulk", "hluk", and "hukl". 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, "hut", "hum", "hun", 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 hulk, hulke, holke (“hut; shed for hogs; type of ship; husk, pod, shell; large, clumsy person; a giant”) (probably reinforced by Middle Dutch hulk, huelc, and Middle Low German hulk, holk, hollek (“freighter, cargo ship, barge”)), from O… The correct English form is hulk, spelled H-U-L-K.
Definition
- 1A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre.
- 2A non-functional but floating ship, usually stripped of equipment and rigging, and often put to other uses such as accommodation or storage.
- 3A large structure with a dominating presence.
- 4A big (and possibly clumsy) person.
- 5A big (and possibly clumsy) person.
Etymology
From Middle English hulk, hulke, holke (“hut; shed for hogs; type of ship; husk, pod, shell; large, clumsy person; a giant”) (probably reinforced by Middle Dutch hulk, huelc, and Middle Low German hulk, holk, hollek (“freighter, cargo ship, barge”)), from Old English hulc (“light ship; heavy, clumsy ship; cabin, hovel, hut”), from Proto-West Germanic *huluk, *hulik, from Proto-Germanic *hulukaz, *hulikaz (“something hollowed or dug out, cavity”), equivalent to hole/hollow + -ock. Cognate with Old High German holcho (“cargo or transport ship, barge”) (whence Middle High German holche, modern German Holk), Old Norse hólkr (“metal tube, ring”), dialectal Norwegian holk, hylke (“wooden barrel”), Middle English holken (“to dig out, gouge”). Relation to Medieval Latin hulcus (“ship”) is uncertain, as Old English may have borrowed from Latin or vice versa, but the form holcas rather points to borrowing from Ancient Greek ὁλκάς (holkás, “ship being towed; cargo ship, ship used for trading, holcad”) (compare Ancient Greek ἕλκω (hélkō, “to drag”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *selk- (“to draw, pull”)). See more at the Old English entry hulc. The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhulk,hluk,hukl,hulkk,hullk,uhlk
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of hulk - 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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Using “hulk”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-U-L-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /hʌlk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “hut” - see the side-by-side comparison. hulk vs hut
- 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.