ox
/ˈɑks/
"ox" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ox” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #15,672) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #15,672
- frequency rank, English
- 1,431
- “O” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An adult castrated male of cattle (B. taurus), especially when used as a beast of burden.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ox · ox · English
ox · rank #15,672 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #15,672
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,431
- PHOTO-FINISH ordeal
Nearest frequency peer: ordeal (-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 “ox”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- notation
notation
84,332 corpus weight
- onstage
onstage
84,331 corpus weight
- ordeal
ordeal
84,330 corpus weight
- ox
ox
84,329 corpus weight
- painfully
painfully
84,328 corpus weight
- paranormal
paranormal
84,327 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ox” 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 | ox |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɑks/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #15,672 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ox”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ox is neighbouring look-alikes ("oz", "oy", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /ˈɑks/. Frequency #15,672 among 1,431 “O” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
ox has no tracked misspelling variants, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "oz", "oy", "oxen", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English oxe, from Old English oxa, from Proto-West Germanic *ohsō, from Proto-Germanic *uhsô (compare West Frisian okse, Dutch os, German Ochse), from Proto-Indo-European *uksḗn. Cognate with Welsh ych (“ox”), Tocharian A ops, Tocharian B okso (… The correct English form is ox, spelled O-X.
Definition
- 1An adult castrated male of cattle (B. taurus), especially when used as a beast of burden.
- 2Any bovine animal (genus Bos).
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how ox appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Here the same four kinds are mentioned ... These are sheep, goats, camels and oxen.
Etymology
From Middle English oxe, from Old English oxa, from Proto-West Germanic *ohsō, from Proto-Germanic *uhsô (compare West Frisian okse, Dutch os, German Ochse), from Proto-Indo-European *uksḗn. Cognate with Welsh ych (“ox”), Tocharian A ops, Tocharian B okso (“draft-ox”), Avestan 𐬎𐬑𐬱𐬀𐬥 (uxšan, “bull”), Sanskrit उक्षन् (ukṣán).
This word in other languages
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.