pizza
/ˈpiːtsə/
"pizza" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pizza” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,445 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,445
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 7
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A baked Italian dish of a thinly rolled bread crust typically topped before baking with tomato sauce, cheese, and other ingredients such as meat or vegetables.
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 | pizza |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpiːtsə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,445 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pizza” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pizza is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpiːtsə/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,445 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 3 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 pizza, with forms such as "ipzza", "piza", and "pizaz". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "plaza", "pia", "Pisa", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 1931, borrowed from Neapolitan pizza (1590), the Neapolitan dialectal form of Byzantine Greek πίτα (píta, “cake, pie”). The Greek word is first attested in 1107 and is itself of uncertain origin. The northern Italian dialectal form was pinza, the southern (… The correct English form is pizza, spelled P-I-Z-Z-A.
Definition
- 1A baked Italian dish of a thinly rolled bread crust typically topped before baking with tomato sauce, cheese, and other ingredients such as meat or vegetables.
- 2A single instance of this dish.
- 3snowplow: a maneuver in which the tips of the skis or skates point inwards and the back ends point outwards.
Etymology
1931, borrowed from Neapolitan pizza (1590), the Neapolitan dialectal form of Byzantine Greek πίτα (píta, “cake, pie”). The Greek word is first attested in 1107 and is itself of uncertain origin. The northern Italian dialectal form was pinza, the southern (Apulian and Calabrian) form was pitta. This suggests a derivation from Latin pīnctus (pictus (“painted, smeared”)) or pīnsum, pīnsitum, pistum (“pounded”), but the northern forms appear to be contaminated with pinzare (“to staple”). There are alternative suggestions involving Greek etymologies (πηκτή (pēktḗ), πηκτός (pēktós, “compacted, congealed”); πήτεα (pḗtea, “bran”); Ancient Greek πιττάκιον (pittákion, “patch; tablet; ticket”)), more remote possibilities involve comparison with Lombardic pizzo, pizza (“bite, morsel, lump, dumpling”); Albanian petë (“layer”), Romanian pată (“blotch, stain, macula”); Albanian pite (“gruel”); From Aramaic פִיתָּא (pītā, “piece of bread”), Hebrew פַּת (paṯ, “bread”). Doublet of pide and pita.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ipzza,piza,pizaz,ppizza,pziza
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of pizza - 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
How do you spell "pizza"?
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Using “pizza”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-I-Z-Z-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈpiːtsə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “plaza” - see the side-by-side comparison. pizza vs plaza
- 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.