knight
/naɪt/
"knight" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“knight” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #4,461 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #4,461
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A young servant or follower; a trained military attendant in service of a lord.
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 | knight |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /naɪt/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #4,461 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “knight” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for knight is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /naɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,461 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 11 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 knight, with forms such as "kinght", "kknight", and "kngiht". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 5 confusable-pair relationships, "knit", "knights", "knighted", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy; servant, knight”), from Proto-West Germanic *kneht. The correct English form is knight, spelled K-N-I-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1A young servant or follower; a trained military attendant in service of a lord.
- 2A minor nobleman with an honourable military rank who had served as a page and squire.
- 3An armored and mounted warrior of the Middle Ages.
- 4A person obliged to provide knight service in exchange for maintenance of an estate held in knight's fee.
- 5A person on whom a knighthood has been conferred by a monarch.
- 6A brave, chivalrous and honorable man devoted to a noble cause or love interest.
- 7A chess piece, often in the shape of a horse's head, that is moved two squares in one direction and one at right angles to that direction in a single move, leaping over any intervening pieces.
- 8A playing card bearing the figure of a knight; the knave or jack.
- 9Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Ypthima.
- 10Any mushroom belonging to genus Tricholoma.
- 11A species of nymphalid butterfly, Lebadea martha, found in tropical and subtropical Asia.
Etymology
From Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy; servant, knight”), from Proto-West Germanic *kneht.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: kinght,kknight,kngiht,knigght,knighht,knightt,knigth,knihgt,knnight,nkight
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of knight - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “knight”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is K-N-I-G-H-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /naɪt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “knit” - see the side-by-side comparison. knight vs knit
- 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.