pulse
/pʌls/
"pulse" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pulse” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #6,507 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #6,507
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A normally regular beat felt when arteries near the skin (for example, at the neck or wrist) are depressed, caused by the heart pumping blood through them; the qualitative nature of this beat.
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 | pulse |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pʌls/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #6,507 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pulse” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for pulse is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pʌls/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,507 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 11 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 pulse, with forms such as "pluse", "ppulse", and "pules". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pus", "push", "pure", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English pulse, Middle English pous, pouse (“regular beat of arteries, pulse; heartbeat; place on the body where a pulse is detectable; beat (of a musical instrument); energy, vitality”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman puls, pous, pus, … The correct English form is pulse, spelled P-U-L-S-E.
Definition
- 1A normally regular beat felt when arteries near the skin (for example, at the neck or wrist) are depressed, caused by the heart pumping blood through them; the qualitative nature of this beat.
- 2The rate of this beat as an indication of a person's health.
- 3A beat or throb; also, a repeated sequence of such beats or throbs.
- 4The focus of energy or vigour of an activity, place, or thing; also, the feeling of bustle, busyness, or energy in a place; the heartbeat.
- 5An (increased) amount of a substance (such as a drug or an isotopic label) given over a short time.
- 6A setting on a food processor which causes it to work in a series of short bursts rather than continuously, in order to break up ingredients without liquidizing them; also, a use of this setting.
- 7The beat or tactus of a piece of music or verse; also, a repeated sequence of such beats.
- 8A brief burst of electromagnetic energy, such as light, radio waves, etc.
- 9Synonym of autosoliton (“a stable solitary localized structure that arises in nonlinear spatially extended dissipative systems due to mechanisms of self-organization”).
- 10A brief increase in the strength of an electrical signal; an impulse.
- 11A timed, coordinated connection, when multiple public transportation vehicles are at a hub at the same time so that passengers can flexibly connect between them.
Etymology
From Late Middle English pulse, Middle English pous, pouse (“regular beat of arteries, pulse; heartbeat; place on the body where a pulse is detectable; beat (of a musical instrument); energy, vitality”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman puls, pous, pus, and Middle French pouls, poulz, pous [and other forms], Old French pous, pulz (“regular beat of arteries; place on the body where a pulse is detectable”) (modern French pouls), and from their etymon Latin pulsus (“beat, impulse, pulse, stroke; regular beat of arteries or the heart”), from pellō (“to drive, impel, propel, push; to banish, eject, expel; to set in motion; to strike”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“to beat, strike; to drive; to push, thrust”)) + -sus (a variant of -tus (suffix forming action nouns from verbs)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: pluse,ppulse,pules,pullse,pulsse,pusle,uplse
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of pulse - 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 “pulse”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-U-L-S-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /pʌls/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “pus” - see the side-by-side comparison. pulse vs pus
- 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.