ogre
/ˈəʊ.ɡə/
"ogre" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ogre” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #25,506) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #25,506
- frequency rank, English
- 1,431
- “O” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A type of brutish giant from folk tales that eats human flesh.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ogre · ogre · English
ogre · rank #25,506 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #25,506
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,431
- PHOTO-FINISH oblige
Nearest frequency peer: oblige (-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 “ogre”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- objectivity
objectivity
74,497 corpus weight
- oblige
oblige
74,496 corpus weight
- ogre
ogre
74,495 corpus weight
- oiled
oiled
74,494 corpus weight
- overheating
overheating
74,492 corpus weight
- overthrown
overthrown
74,490 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ogre” 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 | ogre |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈəʊ.ɡə/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #25,506 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ogre”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ogre is neighbouring look-alikes ("or", "one", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /ˈəʊ.ɡə/. Frequency #25,506 among 1,431 “O” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for ogre, with forms such as "oger", "oggre", and "ogrre". 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, "or", "one", "our", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: First attested in the 18th century, borrowed from French ogre, from Latin Orcus (“god of the underworld”), from Ancient Greek Ὅρκος (Hórkos), the personified demon of oaths (ὅρκος (hórkos, “oath”)) who inflicts punishment upon oath-breakers. Doublet of orc … The correct English form is ogre, spelled O-G-R-E.
Definition
- 1A type of brutish giant from folk tales that eats human flesh.
- 2A cruel person.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ogre appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
And in the seventh tale of the third day of the same collection, when Corvetto had hidden himself under the Ogre's bed to steal his quilt, "he began to pull quite gently, when the Ogre awoke, and bid his wife not to pull the clothes that way, or she'd strip him, and he would get his death of cold." "Why, it's you that are stripping me," replied the Ogress…
And the conquest of the ogres comes at the right moment: not in earliest youth, though the nicors are referred in Beowulf's geogoðfeore as a presage of the kind of hero we have to deal with[.]
Etymology
First attested in the 18th century, borrowed from French ogre, from Latin Orcus (“god of the underworld”), from Ancient Greek Ὅρκος (Hórkos), the personified demon of oaths (ὅρκος (hórkos, “oath”)) who inflicts punishment upon oath-breakers. Doublet of orc and Orcus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- oger
- oggre
- ogrre
- orge
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ogre - 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 "ogre", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).