pear
/pɛə/
"pear" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pear” has 5 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #15,676. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #15,676
- frequency rank, English
- 4,417
- “P” headwords
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but typically elongated towards the stem.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pear · pear · English
pear · rank #15,676 · 5 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #15,676
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 5 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,417
- PHOTO-FINISH piston
Nearest frequency peer: piston (+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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “pear”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- painfully
painfully
84,328 corpus weight
- paranormal
paranormal
84,327 corpus weight
- pear
pear
84,325 corpus weight
- piston
piston
84,324 corpus weight
- plugs
plugs
84,323 corpus weight
- politely
politely
84,322 corpus weight
What this shows “pear” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | pear |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pɛə/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #15,676 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “pear”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 5 spelling variants around pear (IPA /pɛə/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #15,676 among 4,417 “P” headwords. Wiktionary lists 6 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for pear, with forms such as "epar", "paer", and "pearr". 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, "PR", "per", "pet", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English pere, from Old English pere, from Proto-West Germanic *peru, from Vulgar Latin pira, originally the plural of Latin pirum but reconstrued as a feminine singular, ultimately a loanword from an unknown Mediterranean substrate source. Cogna… The correct English form is pear, spelled P-E-A-R.
Definition
- 1An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but typically elongated towards the stem.
- 2A type of fruit tree (Pyrus communis).
- 3The wood of the pear tree (pearwood, pear wood).
- 4Choke pear (a torture device).
- 5avocado, alligator pear
- 6A desaturated chartreuse yellow colour, like that of a pear.
Etymology
From Middle English pere, from Old English pere, from Proto-West Germanic *peru, from Vulgar Latin pira, originally the plural of Latin pirum but reconstrued as a feminine singular, ultimately a loanword from an unknown Mediterranean substrate source. Cognate with Scots peer (“pear”), Saterland Frisian Peere, Pere (“pear”), West Frisian par (“pear”), Dutch peer (“pear”), Danish, Greenlandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk pære (“pear”), Faroese, Icelandic pera (“pear”), Swedish päron (“pear”), German Birne (“pear”), Luxembourgish Bier, Bir (“pear”), Vilamovian biyn (“pear”), Yiddish באַר (bar, “pear”), French poire (“pear”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- epar
- paer
- pearr
- pera
- ppear
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of pear - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "pear", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (5 here; floor ≥5).