prescribed
/pɹəˈskɹaɪbd/
"prescribed" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“prescribed” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,187 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #8,187
- frequency rank, English
- 10
- letters
- 16
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past and past participle of prescribe
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 | prescribed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /pɹəˈskɹaɪbd/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #8,187 |
| Misspellings tracked | 16 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “prescribed” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for prescribed is 10 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pɹəˈskɹaɪbd/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,187 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "simple past and past participle of prescribe".
Our generated misspelling index lists 16 likely wrong-spelling variants for prescribed, with forms such as "perscribed", "pprescribed", and "precsribed". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "prescribe", a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is prescribed, spelled P-R-E-S-C-R-I-B-E-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of prescribe
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: perscribed,pprescribed,precsribed,presccribed,prescirbed,prescrbied,prescribbed,prescribde,prescribedd,prescriebd,prescrribed,presrcibed,presscribed,prrescribed,prsecribed,rpescribed
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of prescribed - 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 “prescribed”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-R-E-S-C-R-I-B-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /pɹəˈskɹaɪbd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “prescribe” - see the side-by-side comparison. prescribed vs prescribe
- 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.