parsley

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for parsley is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɑː(ɹ)sli/. Corpus data places it at rank #20,454 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for parsley, with forms such as "aprsley", "parlsey", and "parrsley". 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 8 confusable-pair relationships, "partly", "Presley", "parse", 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 persely, from Old French peresil, from Latin petroselīnum, from Ancient Greek πετροσέλῑνον (petrosélīnon, “parsley”), from πέτρος (pétros, “rock, stone”) + σέλῑνον (sélīnon, “celery”). Displaced Old English petersiliġe, which goes back t… The correct English form is parsley, spelled P-A-R-S-L-E-Y.