live
/lɪv/
"live" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“live” has 5 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #263. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #263
- frequency rank, English
- 2,297
- “L” headwords
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - To be alive; to have life.
Corpus desk
Index EN-live · live · English
live · rank #263 · 5 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #263
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 5 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,297
- PHOTO-FINISH full
Nearest frequency peer: full (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “live”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- enough
enough
99,741 corpus weight
- everything
everything
99,740 corpus weight
- full
full
99,739 corpus weight
- live
live
99,738 corpus weight
- making
making
99,737 corpus weight
- point
point
99,736 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “live” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | live |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /lɪv/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #263 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “live” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 5 spelling variants around live (IPA /lɪv/), averb. Corpus frequency is #263 among 2,297 “L” headwords. Wiktionary lists 13 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for live, with forms such as "ilve", "liev", and "livve". 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, "LV", "Liz", "luv", 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 lefe, lifen, libbe, libben, live, luvien, lyven, from Old English libban, lifian (“to live; be alive”), from Proto-West Germanic *libbjan, from Proto-Germanic *libjaną (“to live”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick”). Cognates C… The correct English form is live, spelled L-I-V-E.
Definition
- 1To be alive; to have life.
- 2To have permanent residence somewhere, to inhabit, to reside.
- 3To have permanent residence somewhere, to inhabit, to reside.
- 4To survive; to persevere; to continue.
- 5To endure in memory; to escape oblivion.
- 6To cope.
- 7To pass life in a specified manner.
- 8To spend, as one's life; to pass; to maintain; to continue in, constantly or habitually.
- 9To act habitually in conformity with; to practice; to exemplify in one's way of life.
- 10To live as; to live being.
- 11To outlast danger; (of a ship or boat) to float.
- 12To maintain or support one's existence; to provide for oneself; to feed; to subsist.
- 13To make the most of life; to experience a full, rich life.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how live appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He's not expected to live for more than a few months.
I live at 2a Acacia Avenue. At that time I'd been living in a camper for about six months.
Etymology
From Middle English lefe, lifen, libbe, libben, live, luvien, lyven, from Old English libban, lifian (“to live; be alive”), from Proto-West Germanic *libbjan, from Proto-Germanic *libjaną (“to live”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick”). Cognates Cognate with Yola live (“to live”), North Frisian laawe, lawe, lewe, lewi, lewwe, lääwe (“to live”), Saterland Frisian lieuwje, líeuwje (“to live”), West Frisian libje (“to live”), Alemannic German lëëbe (“to live”), Cimbrian and Mòcheno lem (“to live”), Dutch leeven, leven (“to live”), German leben (“to live”), German Low German lęven (“to live”), Limburgish leve, léëve (“to live”), Luxembourgish liewen (“to live”), Vilamovian łaowa (“to live”), Yiddish לעבן (lebn, “to live”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål leve (“to live”), Faroese liva (“to live”), Icelandic lifa (“to live”), Norwegian Nynorsk leva, leve, liva (“to live”), Swedish leva (“to live”), Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌱𐌰𐌽 (liban, “to live”); also Latin lippus (“half-sighted, myopic”), Greek λίπος (lípos, “fat, tallow”), Lithuanian lipti (“to stick”), Bulgarian лепя́ (lepjá, “to glue, paste, stick; to plaster, smear”), Czech lepit (“to glue, stick”), Macedonian лепи (lepi, “to glue, stick”), Polish lepić (“to mold; to glue, paste; to stick”), Russian лепи́ть (lepítʹ, “to fashion, sculpt, shape”), Serbo-Croatian лепити, лије́пити, lépiti, lijépiti (“to glue, paste; to stick”), Slovak lepiť (“to stick”), Slovene lepiti (“to stick”), Ukrainian ліпити (lipyty, “to mould, shape”), Sanskrit लिप् (lip, “to anoint, smear; to defile, soil, taint”), रिप् (rip, “deceit, fraud; injury; enemy, traitor”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ilve
- liev
- livve
- llive
- lvie
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of live - 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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "live", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (5 here; floor ≥5).
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.