merited
"merited" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“merited” has 10 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #40,337. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #40,337
- frequency rank, English
- 36,575
- “M” headwords
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 4
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - deserved
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 | merited |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #40,337 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “merited” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 10 spelling variants around merited, anadjective. Corpus frequency is #40,337 among 36,575 “M” headwords. Dominant gloss: "deserved".
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for merited, with forms such as "emrited", "meirted", and "merietd". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "merits", "merit", "melted", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is merited, spelled M-E-R-I-T-E-D.
Definition
- 1deserved
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- emrited
- meirted
- merietd
- meritde
- meritedd
- meritted
- merrited
- mertied
- mmerited
- mreited
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of merited - 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 "merited"?
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Using “merited”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-E-R-I-T-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “merits” - see the side-by-side comparison. merited vs merits
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Same frequency band
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.