milk
/mɪlk/
"milk" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“milk” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,223 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,223
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 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...
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) |
Where “milk” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for milk is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /mɪlk/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,223 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
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.
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
How do you spell "milk"?
What does "milk" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "milk"?
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Using “milk”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-I-L-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /mɪlk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “ML” - see the side-by-side comparison. milk vs ML
- 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.