melody
/ˈmɛl.ə.di/
"melody" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“melody” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #9,496 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #9,496
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 8
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase.
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 | melody |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɛl.ə.di/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #9,496 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 8 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “melody” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for melody is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɛl.ə.di/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,496 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for melody, with forms such as "emlody", "meldoy", and "mellody". 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 8 confusable-pair relationships, "moody", "melon", "moldy", 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 melodie, melodye, from Old French melodie, from Latin melodia, from Ancient Greek μελῳδίᾱ (melōidíā, “singing, chanting”), from μέλος (mélos, “musical phrase”) + ἀοιδή (aoidḗ, “song”), contracted form ᾠδή (ōidḗ). The correct English form is melody, spelled M-E-L-O-D-Y.
Definition
- 1A sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase.
Etymology
From Middle English melodie, melodye, from Old French melodie, from Latin melodia, from Ancient Greek μελῳδίᾱ (melōidíā, “singing, chanting”), from μέλος (mélos, “musical phrase”) + ἀοιδή (aoidḗ, “song”), contracted form ᾠδή (ōidḗ).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: emlody,meldoy,mellody,meloddy,melodyy,meloyd,meoldy,mleody,mmelody
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of melody - 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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Using “melody”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-E-L-O-D-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈmɛl.ə.di/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “moody” - see the side-by-side comparison. melody vs moody
- 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.