mood
/muːd/
"mood" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“mood” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,378 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,378
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A mental or emotional state, composure.
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 | mood |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /muːd/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,378 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mood” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mood is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /muːd/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,378 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 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for mood, with forms such as "mmood", "modo", and "moodd". 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, "MUD", "MoS", "mop", 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 mood, mode, mod, from Old English mōd (“mind,” in poetry also “heart, spirit, courage”), from Proto-West Germanic *mōd, from Proto-Germanic *mōdaz (“sense, courage, zeal, anger”), from Proto-Indo-European *moh₁-, *meh₁- (“endeavour, will… The correct English form is mood, spelled M-O-O-D.
Definition
- 1A mental or emotional state, composure.
- 2Emotional character (of a work of music, literature, or other art).
- 3A sullen, gloomy or angry mental state; a bad mood.
- 4A disposition to do something, a state of mind receptive or disposed to do something.
- 5A prevalent atmosphere, attitude, or feeling.
- 6A familiar, relatable feeling, experience, or thing.
Etymology
From Middle English mood, mode, mod, from Old English mōd (“mind,” in poetry also “heart, spirit, courage”), from Proto-West Germanic *mōd, from Proto-Germanic *mōdaz (“sense, courage, zeal, anger”), from Proto-Indo-European *moh₁-, *meh₁- (“endeavour, will, temper”). Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Moud (“courage”), West Frisian moed (“courage; mind; spirit; will; intention”), Dutch moed (“bravery, courage; mood”), German Mut, Muth (“bravery, courage; mood”), German Low German Mood (“boldness, bravery, courage”), Luxembourgish Mutt (“courage”), Yiddish מוט (mut, “bravery, courage”), Danish and Swedish mod (“courage”), Faroese and Icelandic móður (“anger, wrath; fierce mood”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk mot (“courage”), Gothic 𐌼𐍉𐌸𐍃 (mōþs, “mood; anger”), Vandalic *muths (“mind”); also Latin mōs (“behavior, conduct, manner; inclination, temperament; humour, will”), Bulgarian сме́я (sméja, “to dare”), Czech smět (“to be allowed; may”), Macedonian сме́е (smée, “to be allowed”), Polish śmieć (“dare”), Russian сметь (smetʹ, “to dare”), Serbo-Croatian сме̏ти, смје̏ти, smȅti, smjȅti (“to dare, venture”), Slovak smieť (“to be allowed; may”), Slovene smeti (“to be allowed; may”) Ukrainian смі́ти (smíty, “to dare”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmood,modo,moodd,omod
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of mood - 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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Using “mood”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-O-O-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /muːd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “MUD” - see the side-by-side comparison. mood vs MUD
- 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.