jolly
/ˈd͡ʒɒli/
"jolly" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“jolly” has 6 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #13,549. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #13,549
- frequency rank, English
- 796
- “J” headwords
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 12
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Full of merriment and high spirits; jovial; joyous; merry.
Corpus desk
Index EN-jolly · jolly · English
jolly · rank #13,549 · 6 variants · 12 confusables
- FREQ-MID #13,549
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 12 pairs
- VAR-MID 6 variants
- BOOK-MID 796
- PHOTO-FINISH jockey
Nearest frequency peer: jockey (-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 “jolly”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- Isabel
Isabel
86,455 corpus weight
- Jamaican
Jamaican
86,454 corpus weight
- jockey
jockey
86,453 corpus weight
- jolly
jolly
86,452 corpus weight
- Jorge
Jorge
86,451 corpus weight
- Ju
Ju
86,450 corpus weight
What this shows “jolly” 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 | jolly |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈd͡ʒɒli/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #13,549 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 12 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “jolly”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 6 spelling variants around jolly (IPA /ˈd͡ʒɒli/), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #13,549 among 796 “J” headwords. Wiktionary lists 3 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for jolly, with forms such as "jjolly", "jloly", and "jollyy". 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 12 confusable-pair relationships, "joy", "July", "jolt", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English joli, jolif (“merry, cheerful”), from Old French joli, jolif (“merry, joyful”). For the loss of final -f in English, compare tardy, hasty, hussy, etc. It is uncertain whether the Old French word is from Old Norse jól ("a midwinter feast,… The correct English form is jolly, spelled J-O-L-L-Y.
Definition
- 1Full of merriment and high spirits; jovial; joyous; merry.
- 2Splendid, excellent, pleasant.
- 3Drunk.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how jolly appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
"Full jolly Knight he seemed […] full large of limb and every joint / He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
"A jolly place," said he, "in times of old! / But something ails it now: the spot is curst. ..."
Etymology
From Middle English joli, jolif (“merry, cheerful”), from Old French joli, jolif (“merry, joyful”). For the loss of final -f in English, compare tardy, hasty, hussy, etc. It is uncertain whether the Old French word is from Old Norse jól ("a midwinter feast, Yule", hence "fest-ive"), in which case, equivalent to yule + -ive, compare Dutch jolig (“happy, festive, frolicsome, jolly”), West Frisian joelich, joalich (“merry, jolly”), Middle High German jœlich (“hooting, jubilant”). Alternatively, the Old French adjective has been conjectured to derive from a Vulgar Latin *gaudivus (from Latin gaudeō, more at joy), in which case it would require Early Old French ⟨d⟩ /ð/ to irregularly become ⟨l⟩ in jolif rather than being dropped, which is the usual case (alternatively, /l/ may be a hiatus filler inserted into expected *joïf). A possible parallel of ⟨d⟩ to ⟨l⟩ can be seen in the French name Valois, according to one hypothesis from Latin Vadensis, though this origin is itself uncertain and disputed.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- jjolly
- jloly
- jollyy
- joly
- jolyl
- ojlly
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of jolly - 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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "jolly", 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 (6 here; floor ≥5).