ilk
/ɪlk/
"ilk" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ilk” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #32,443 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #32,443
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Very; same.
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 | ilk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ɪlk/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #32,443 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ilk” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ilk is 3 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪlk/. Corpus data places it at rank #32,443 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Very; same.".
Zero misspellings are on record for ilk in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "in", "is", "it", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English ilke, from Old English ilca, conjectured as from Proto-Germanic *ilīkaz, a compound of *iz and *-līkaz from the noun *līką (“body”). The sense of “type”, “kind” is from the application of the phrase of that ilk to families: the… The correct English form is ilk, spelled I-L-K.
Definition
- 1Very; same.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English ilke, from Old English ilca, conjectured as from Proto-Germanic *ilīkaz, a compound of *iz and *-līkaz from the noun *līką (“body”). The sense of “type”, “kind” is from the application of the phrase of that ilk to families: the word thus came to mean family.
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 “ilk”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is I-L-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɪlk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “in” - see the side-by-side comparison. ilk vs in
- 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.