miss
/mɪs/
"miss" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“miss” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #609) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #609
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc.
Corpus desk
Index EN-miss · miss · English
miss · rank #609 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #609
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH land
Nearest frequency peer: land (-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.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “miss”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- goes
goes
99,395 corpus weight
- killed
killed
99,394 corpus weight
- land
land
99,393 corpus weight
- miss
miss
99,392 corpus weight
- project
project
99,391 corpus weight
- sex
sex
99,390 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “miss” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | miss |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /mɪs/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #609 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “miss”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for miss is neighbouring look-alikes ("MS", "Mrs", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced /mɪs/. Frequency #609 among 4,057 “M” headwords. 15 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for miss, with forms such as "imss", "mis", and "mmiss". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "MS", "Mrs", "mix", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Verb from Middle English missen, from Old English missan (“to miss, escape the notice of a person”), from Proto-West Germanic *missijan, from Proto-Germanic *missijaną (“to miss, go wrong, fail”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, exchange, tra… The correct English form is miss, spelled M-I-S-S.
Definition
- 1To fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc.
- 2To avoid hitting.
- 3To fail to achieve or attain.
- 4To fail to experience, attend, partake, take advantage of, etc.
- 5To avoid or escape.
- 6To become aware of the loss or absence of; to feel the want or need of, sometimes with regret; to feel sadness at the absence of somebody or something.
- 7To fail to understand.
- 8To fail to notice; to have a shortcoming of perception; overlook.
- 9To be too late to connect with or meet something or someone (a means of transportation, a deadline, etc.).
- 10To be wanting; to lack something that should be present (see also adjectival missing).
- 11To spare someone of something unwanted or undesirable.
- 12To fail to help the hand of a player.
- 13To fail to score (a goal).
- 14To go wrong; to err.
- 15To be absent, deficient, or wanting.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how miss appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I fired the gun, but the bullet missed the target.
I tried to kick the ball, but missed.
Etymology
Verb from Middle English missen, from Old English missan (“to miss, escape the notice of a person”), from Proto-West Germanic *missijan, from Proto-Germanic *missijaną (“to miss, go wrong, fail”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, exchange, trade”). Cognate with West Frisian misse (“to miss”), Dutch missen (“to miss”), German missen (“to miss”), Norwegian Bokmål and Danish miste (“to lose”), Swedish missa (“to miss”), Norwegian Nynorsk, Icelandic missa (“to lose”) and Latin mittere (“to send, let go”). Noun from Middle English misse, mis, from Old English miss (“loss, absence”), from Proto-West Germanic *miss, from Proto-Germanic *miss- (“loss”). Cognate with Scots miss (“a loss, want, cause of grief or mourning”), Middle High German misse, mis (“lack, missing, absence”), Icelandic missir (“loss”). Related also to Scots mis (“wrongdoing, sin, guilt”), Dutch mis (“misdeed, wrongdoing, mistake”), Middle Low German misse (“sin, wrong”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- imss
- mis
- mmiss
- msis
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of miss - 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 "miss", not the corpus desk frequency band.