mouth
/maʊθ/
"mouth" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“mouth” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,569 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,569
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The front opening of a creature through which food is ingested.
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 | mouth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /maʊθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,569 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mouth” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mouth is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /maʊθ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,569 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for mouth, with forms such as "mmouth", "motuh", and "mouht". 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, "muh", "much", "myth", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English mouth, from Old English mūþ, from Proto-West Germanic *munþ, from Proto-Germanic *munþaz (“mouth”), from Proto-Indo-European *ment- (“to chew; jaw, mouth”). Cognate with Scots mooth (“mouth”), North Frisian mös, müs, Mür (“mouth”), West … The correct English form is mouth, spelled M-O-U-T-H.
Definition
- 1The front opening of a creature through which food is ingested.
- 2The end of a river out of which water flows into a sea or other large body of water; or the end of a tributary out of which water flows into a larger river.
- 3An outlet, aperture or orifice.
- 4A loud or overly talkative person.
- 5A gossip.
- 6The crosspiece of a bridle bit, which enters the mouth of an animal.
- 7A principal speaker; one who utters the common opinion; a mouthpiece.
- 8Speech; language; testimony.
- 9A wry face; a grimace; a mow.
Etymology
From Middle English mouth, from Old English mūþ, from Proto-West Germanic *munþ, from Proto-Germanic *munþaz (“mouth”), from Proto-Indo-European *ment- (“to chew; jaw, mouth”). Cognate with Scots mooth (“mouth”), North Frisian mös, müs, Mür (“mouth”), West Frisian mûn (“mouth”), Dutch mond (“mouth”), muide (“river mouth”) and mui (“riptide”), German Mund (“mouth”), Luxembourgish Mond (“mouth”), Danish mund (“mouth”), Faroese muður, munnur (“mouth”), Icelandic munnur (“mouth”), Swedish mun (“mouth”), Norwegian munn (“mouth”), Gothic 𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 (munþs, “mouth”), Latin mentum (“chin”) and mandō (“to chew”), Ancient Greek μάσταξ (mástax, “jaws, mouth”) and μασάομαι (masáomai, “to chew”), Albanian mjekër (“chin, beard”), Welsh mant (“jawbone”), Hittite [script needed] (mēni, “chin”). The verb is from Middle English mouthen, from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmouth,motuh,mouht,mouthh,moutth,muoth,omuth
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of mouth - 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 “mouth”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-O-U-T-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /maʊθ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “muh” - see the side-by-side comparison. mouth vs muh
- 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.