meadow
/ˈmɛd.əʊ̯/
"meadow" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“meadow” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #13,017 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #13,017
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 6
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A field or pasture; a piece of land either intentionally cultivated with grass or (especially) naturally covered with grass, especially one that is intended to be mown for hay or to be grazed.
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 | meadow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɛd.əʊ̯/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #13,017 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “meadow” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for meadow is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɛd.əʊ̯/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,017 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for meadow, with forms such as "emadow", "maedow", and "meaddow". 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 6 confusable-pair relationships, "meow", "mellow", "Meadows", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English medowe, medewe, medwe (also mede > Modern English mead), from Old English mǣdwe, inflected form of mǣd (see mead), from Proto-Germanic *mēdwō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂met- (“to mow, reap”), enlargement of *h₂meh₁-. Related to mead (“… The correct English form is meadow, spelled M-E-A-D-O-W.
Definition
- 1A field or pasture; a piece of land either intentionally cultivated with grass or (especially) naturally covered with grass, especially one that is intended to be mown for hay or to be grazed.
- 2Low land covered with coarse grass or rank herbage near rivers and in marshy places by the sea.
Etymology
From Middle English medowe, medewe, medwe (also mede > Modern English mead), from Old English mǣdwe, inflected form of mǣd (see mead), from Proto-Germanic *mēdwō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂met- (“to mow, reap”), enlargement of *h₂meh₁-. Related to mead (“meadow”) and to math (“mowed result or area”). More at mow. Related to the following: West Frisian miede, dialectal Dutch made, dialectal German Matte (“mountain pasture”); also Welsh medi, Latin metō, Ancient Greek ἄμητος (ámētos, “reaping”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: emadow,maedow,meaddow,meadoww,meadwo,meaodw,medaow,mmeadow
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of meadow - 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
How do you spell "meadow"?
What does "meadow" mean?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “meadow”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-E-A-D-O-W - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈmɛd.əʊ̯/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “meow” - see the side-by-side comparison. meadow vs meow
- 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.