pouch
/paʊt͡ʃ/
"pouch" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pouch” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #16,563 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #16,563
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A small bag usually closed with a drawstring.
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 | pouch |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /paʊt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #16,563 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pouch” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pouch is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /paʊt͡ʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #16,563 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for pouch, with forms such as "opuch", "pocuh", and "poucch". 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, "push", "pour", "puck", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *pukô Frankish *pokōbor. Old French puche Old Northern French pouchebor. Middle English pouche English pouch From Middle English pouche, poche, borrowed from Old Northern French pouche, from Old French poche, puche (whence Fren… The correct English form is pouch, spelled P-O-U-C-H.
Definition
- 1A small bag usually closed with a drawstring.
- 2An organic pocket in which a marsupial carries its young.
- 3Any pocket or bag-shaped object, such as a cheek pouch.
- 4A protuberant belly; a paunch.
- 5A cyst or sac containing fluid.
- 6A silicle, or short pod, as of the shepherd's purse.
- 7A bulkhead in the hold of a vessel, to prevent grain etc. from shifting.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *pukô Frankish *pokōbor. Old French puche Old Northern French pouchebor. Middle English pouche English pouch From Middle English pouche, poche, borrowed from Old Northern French pouche, from Old French poche, puche (whence French poche; compare also the Anglo-Norman variant poke), of Germanic origin: from Frankish *poka (“pouch”) (compare Middle Dutch poke, Old English pohha, dialectal German Pfoch). Doublet of poke; compare pocket.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: opuch,pocuh,poucch,pouchh,pouhc,ppouch,puoch
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of pouch - 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 “pouch”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-O-U-C-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /paʊt͡ʃ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “push” - see the side-by-side comparison. pouch vs push
- 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.