potable
/ˈpəʊtəbəl/
"potable" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“potable” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #35,887 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #35,887
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 6
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Good for drinking without fear of waterborne disease or poisoning.
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 | potable |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈpəʊtəbəl/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #35,887 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “potable” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for potable is 7 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpəʊtəbəl/. Corpus data places it at rank #35,887 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Good for drinking without fear of waterborne disease or poisoning.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for potable, with forms such as "optable", "poatble", and "potabble". 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 6 confusable-pair relationships, "pothole", "probable", "payable", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: The adjective is derived from Late Middle English potable (“drinkable, potable”), from Middle French, Old French potable (modern French potable (“drinkable, potable”)), and from its etymon Late Latin pōtābilis (“drinkable, potable”), from Latin pōtāre (“to … The correct English form is potable, spelled P-O-T-A-B-L-E.
Definition
- 1Good for drinking without fear of waterborne disease or poisoning.
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Late Middle English potable (“drinkable, potable”), from Middle French, Old French potable (modern French potable (“drinkable, potable”)), and from its etymon Late Latin pōtābilis (“drinkable, potable”), from Latin pōtāre (“to drink”) + -bilis (suffix forming adjectives indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon). Pōtāre is the present active infinitive of pōtō (“to drink”), from Proto-Italic *pōtos, from Proto-Indo-European *peh₃- (“to drink”). The English word is cognate with Catalan potable, Italian potabile, Spanish potable. The noun is derived from the adjective.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: optable,poatble,potabble,potabel,potablle,potalbe,potbale,potible,pottable,ppotable,ptoable
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of potable - 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 “potable”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-O-T-A-B-L-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈpəʊtəbəl/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “pothole” - see the side-by-side comparison. potable vs pothole
- 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.