q
/kjuː/
"q" is a 1-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“q” sits in 18 confusable pairs (corpus #2,698) as a character. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #2,698
- frequency rank, English
- 2,880
- “Q” headwords
- 18
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The seventeenth letter of the English alphabet, called cue and written in the Latin script.
Corpus desk
Index EN-q · q · English
q · rank #2,698 · 0 variants · 18 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #2,698
- LEN-SHORT 1 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 18 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,880
- PHOTO-FINISH promote
Nearest frequency peer: promote (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbourhood for “q”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- pregnant
pregnant
97,306 corpus weight
- premier
premier
97,305 corpus weight
- promote
promote
97,304 corpus weight
- q
q
97,303 corpus weight
- revolution
revolution
97,302 corpus weight
- rooms
rooms
97,301 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “q” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | q |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Character |
| IPA | /kjuː/ |
| Letters | 1 |
| Frequency rank | #2,698 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 18 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “q” sits in English frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for q is neighbouring look-alikes ("QB", "qc", …), not just typos; it is acharacter pronounced /kjuː/. Frequency #2,698 among 2,880 “Q” headwords. Gloss: "The seventeenth letter of the English alphabet, called cue and written in the Latin script.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for q in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 18 confusable-pair relationships, "QB", "qc", "qi", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is q, spelled Q.
Definition
- 1The seventeenth letter of the English alphabet, called cue and written in the Latin script.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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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.