pain
/peɪn/
"pain" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pain” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #996 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #996
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An ache or bodily suffering, or an instance of this; an unpleasant sensation, resulting from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; hurt.
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 | pain |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /peɪn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #996 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pain” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pain is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /peɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #996 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for pain, with forms such as "apin", "painn", and "pani". 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, "pi", "pay", "Pan", 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 peyne, payne, from Old French and Anglo-Norman peine, paine, from Latin poena (“punishment, pain”), from Ancient Greek ποινή (poinḗ, “bloodmoney, weregild, fine, price paid, penalty”), from Proto-Hellenic *kʷoinā́, from Proto-Indo-Europe… The correct English form is pain, spelled P-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1An ache or bodily suffering, or an instance of this; an unpleasant sensation, resulting from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; hurt.
- 2An ache or bodily suffering, or an instance of this; an unpleasant sensation, resulting from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; hurt.
- 3The condition or fact of suffering or anguish especially mental, as opposed to pleasure; torment; distress
- 4An annoying person or thing.
- 5Suffering inflicted as punishment or penalty.
- 6Labour; effort; great care or trouble taken in doing something.
Etymology
From Middle English peyne, payne, from Old French and Anglo-Norman peine, paine, from Latin poena (“punishment, pain”), from Ancient Greek ποινή (poinḗ, “bloodmoney, weregild, fine, price paid, penalty”), from Proto-Hellenic *kʷoinā́, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷoynéh₂ (“payment”) (whence also Proto-Slavic *cěnà (“price”)). Doublet of peine. Compare Danish pine, Norwegian Bokmål pine, German Pein, Dutch pijn, Afrikaans pyn. See also pine (the verb). Partly displaced native Old English sār (whence Modern English sore).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apin,painn,pani,pian,ppain
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of pain - 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 “pain”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-A-I-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /peɪn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “pi” - see the side-by-side comparison. pain vs pi
- 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.