moat
/məʊt/
"moat" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“moat” has 5 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #24,831. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #24,831
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A deep, wide defensive ditch, normally filled with water, surrounding a fortified habitation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-moat · moat · English
moat · rank #24,831 · 5 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #24,831
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 5 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH minding
Nearest frequency peer: minding (-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 “moat”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- mediocrity
mediocrity
75,174 corpus weight
- midwestern
midwestern
75,172 corpus weight
- minding
minding
75,171 corpus weight
- moat
moat
75,170 corpus weight
- Mori
Mori
75,168 corpus weight
- Morty
Morty
75,167 corpus weight
What this shows “moat” 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 | moat |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /məʊt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #24,831 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “moat”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 5 spelling variants around moat (IPA /məʊt/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #24,831 among 4,057 “M” headwords. Wiktionary lists 5 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for moat, with forms such as "maot", "mmoat", and "moatt". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "MT", "mom", "mob", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English mote, from Old French mote (“mound, embankment”); compared also to Old French motte (“hillock, lump, clod, turf”), from Medieval Latin mota (“a mound, hill”), of Germanic origin, perhaps via Frankish *mot, *motta (“mud, peat, bog, turf”)… The correct English form is moat, spelled M-O-A-T.
Definition
- 1A deep, wide defensive ditch, normally filled with water, surrounding a fortified habitation.
- 2An aspect of a business which makes it more "defensible" from competitors, because of the nature of its products, services or franchise or for some other reason.
- 3A circular lowland between a resurgent dome and the walls of the caldera surrounding it.
- 4A clear ring outside the eyewall of a tropical cyclone.
- 5A hill or mound.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how moat appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
No matter how good your company's product is or how quickly the industry is growing, if there is no moat, competitors will invade your castle and burn it down.
“I think ‘moats’ are lame,” Mr. Musk had said during a Tesla earnings call. It was a criticism of an economic principle that Mr. Buffett had coined in 1999 and that has become something of a mantra for his faithful: Invest in businesses “that have wide, sustainable moats around them.”
Etymology
From Middle English mote, from Old French mote (“mound, embankment”); compared also to Old French motte (“hillock, lump, clod, turf”), from Medieval Latin mota (“a mound, hill”), of Germanic origin, perhaps via Frankish *mot, *motta (“mud, peat, bog, turf”), from Proto-Germanic *mutô, *mudraz, *muþraz (“dirt, filth, mud, swamp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mut- (“dark, dirty”). Cognate with Alemannic German Mott, Mutte (“peat, turf”), Bavarian Mott (“peat, turf”), dialectal Dutch mot (“dust, fine sand”), Saterland Frisian mut (“grit, litter, humus”), Swedish muta (“to drizzle”), Old English mot (“speck, particle”). More at mote, mud, smut. As term for a business strategy, popularized by American investor Warren Buffett.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- maot
- mmoat
- moatt
- mota
- omat
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of moat - 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
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "moat", 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 (5 here; floor ≥5).