men
/mɛn/
"men" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“men” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #289 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #289
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - plural of man
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 | men |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /mɛn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #289 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “men” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for men is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /mɛn/. Corpus data places it at rank #289 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "plural of man".
No generated misspelling entries exist for men in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "my", "Mr", "MS", 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 men, from Old English menn (“people”), from Proto-Germanic *manniz, nominative plural of Proto-Germanic *mann- (“person”). Cognate with German Männer (“men”), Danish mænd (“men”), Swedish män (“men”). More at man. The correct English form is men, spelled M-E-N.
Definition
- 1plural of man
Etymology
From Middle English men, from Old English menn (“people”), from Proto-Germanic *manniz, nominative plural of Proto-Germanic *mann- (“person”). Cognate with German Männer (“men”), Danish mænd (“men”), Swedish män (“men”). More at man.
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 “men”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-E-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /mɛn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “my” - see the side-by-side comparison. men vs my
- 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.