milk
/mɪlk/
"milk" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“milk” has 6 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #2,223. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #2,223
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals to nourish their young. From certain animals, especially cows, it is also called dairy milk and is a common food for humans as a beve...
Corpus desk
Index EN-milk · milk · English
milk · rank #2,223 · 6 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #2,223
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 6 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH max
Nearest frequency peer: max (-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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “milk”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- loves
loves
97,781 corpus weight
- lunch
lunch
97,780 corpus weight
- max
max
97,779 corpus weight
- milk
milk
97,778 corpus weight
- pack
pack
97,777 corpus weight
- payment
payment
97,776 corpus weight
What this shows “milk” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | milk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /mɪlk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,223 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “milk”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 6 spelling variants around milk (IPA /mɪlk/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #2,223 among 4,057 “M” headwords. Wiktionary lists 6 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for milk, with forms such as "imlk", "mikl", and "milkk". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ML", "MK", "mix", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English milk, mylk, melk, mulc, from Old English meolc, meoluc (“milk”), from Proto-West Germanic *meluk (“milk”), from Proto-Germanic *meluks (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ- (“milk, to milk”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian molk… The correct English form is milk, spelled M-I-L-K.
Definition
- 1A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals to nourish their young. From certain animals, especially cows, it is also called dairy milk and is a common food for humans as a beverage or used to produce various dairy products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt.
- 2A white (or whitish) liquid obtained from a vegetable source such as almonds, coconuts, oats, rice, or soy beans.
- 3An individual serving of milk.
- 4An individual portion of milk, such as found in a creamer, for tea and coffee.
- 5The ripe, undischarged spat of an oyster.
- 6Semen.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how milk appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Skyr is a product made of curdled milk.
2007 September 24, Chris Horseman (interviewee), Emily Harris (reporter), “Global Dairy Demand Drives Up Prices”, Morning Edition, National Public Radio […] there's going to be that much less milk available to cover any other uses. Which means whether it's liquid milk or whether it's [milk that's been turned into] cheese or yogurt, the price gets pulled u…
Etymology
From Middle English milk, mylk, melk, mulc, from Old English meolc, meoluc (“milk”), from Proto-West Germanic *meluk (“milk”), from Proto-Germanic *meluks (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ- (“milk, to milk”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian molke (“milk”), Dutch melk (“milk”), Dutch Low Saxon melk (“milk”), German Milch (“milk”), German Low German Melk (“milk”), Yiddish מילך (milkh, “milk”), Danish mælk (“milk”), Faroese and Icelandic mjólk (“milk”), Norn *mjølk (“milk”), Norwegian Bokmål melk, mjølk (“milk”), Norwegian Nynorsk mjølk (“milk”), Swedish mjölk (“milk”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌻𐌿𐌺𐍃 (miluks, “milk”), Greek αμέλγω (amélgo, “to milk”), Albanian mjel (“to milk”), Latvian malks, Lithuanian malkas, Belarusian малако́ (malakó, “milk”), Bulgarian мля́ко (mljáko, “milk”), Czech mléko, Macedonian мле́ко (mléko, “milk”), Polish mleko (“milk”), Russian and Ukrainian молоко́ (molokó, “milk”), Serbo-Croatian mlijéko (“milk”), Slovak mlieko (“milk”), Slovene mlẹ́ko (“milk”), Welsh blith, Tocharian A malke.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- imlk
- mikl
- milkk
- millk
- mlik
- mmilk
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of milk - 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "milk", 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 (6 here; floor ≥5).