ked
"ked" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ked” is uncommon English (frequency #71,624 among 9,255 “K” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #71,624
- frequency rank, English
- 9,255
- “K” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Any of the family Hippoboscidae of obligate parasites, especially the sheep ked, Melophagus ovinus.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ked |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #71,624 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ked” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
ked is uncommon English at frequency #71,624 among 9,255 “K” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Any of the family Hippoboscidae of obligate parasites, especially the sheep ked, Melophagus ovinus.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for ked, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Of unknown origin. Possibly from or related to Old Danish keed (“sheep ked, louse-fly”). The correct English form is ked, spelled K-E-D.
Definition
- 1Any of the family Hippoboscidae of obligate parasites, especially the sheep ked, Melophagus ovinus.
Etymology
Of unknown origin. Possibly from or related to Old Danish keed (“sheep ked, louse-fly”).
Synonyms
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 “ked”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is K-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.