rabbit
/ˈɹæbɪt/
"rabbit" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“rabbit” has 7 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #6,609. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #6,609
- frequency rank, English
- 21,470
- “R” headwords
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 4
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A mammal of most genera of the family Leporidae, with long ears, long hind legs and a short, fluffy tail.
Corpus desk
Index EN-rabbit · rabbit · English
rabbit · rank #6,609 · 7 variants · 4 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #6,609
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 4 pairs
- VAR-MID 7 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 21,470
- PHOTO-FINISH proceeds
Nearest frequency peer: proceeds (-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 “rabbit”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- pills
pills
93,395 corpus weight
- planets
planets
93,394 corpus weight
- proceeds
proceeds
93,393 corpus weight
- rabbit
rabbit
93,392 corpus weight
- ranges
ranges
93,390 corpus weight
- rats
rats
93,389 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “rabbit” 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 | rabbit |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɹæbɪt/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #6,609 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “rabbit” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 7 spelling variants around rabbit (IPA /ˈɹæbɪt/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #6,609 among 21,470 “R” headwords. Wiktionary lists 10 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for rabbit, with forms such as "arbbit", "rabbitt", and "rabbti". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "rabid", "rabble", "rabbi", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (“rabbit, seal”), of uncertain origin; possibly some imitative verb, maybe robben, rubben (“to rub”… The correct English form is rabbit, spelled R-A-B-B-I-T.
Definition
- 1A mammal of most genera of the family Leporidae, with long ears, long hind legs and a short, fluffy tail.
- 2The meat from this animal.
- 3The fur of a rabbit typically used to imitate another animal's fur.
- 4A runner in a distance race whose goal is mainly to set the pace, either to tire a specific rival so that a teammate can win or to help another break a record; a pacesetter.
- 5A very poor batsman, selected as a bowler or wicket-keeper.
- 6A batsman who is frequently dismissed by the same bowler (said to be that player's rabbit).
- 7A large element at the beginning of a list of items to be bubble sorted, and thus tending to be quickly swapped into its correct position. Compare turtle.
- 8Rarebit; Welsh rabbit or a similar dish: melted cheese served atop toast.
- 9A pneumatically-controlled tool used to insert small samples of material inside the core of a nuclear reactor.
- 10A vibrator with a shaft and a clitoral stimulator usually shaped like a rabbit's ears.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how rabbit appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The pioneers survived by eating the small game they could get: rabbits, squirrels and occasionally a raccoon.
Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out. Indeed, a nail filed sharp is not of much avail as an arrowhead; you must have it barbed, and that was a little beyond our skill.
Etymology
From Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (“rabbit, seal”), of uncertain origin; possibly some imitative verb, maybe robben, rubben (“to rub”) is used here to allude to a characteristic of the animal. See rub. Related forms include Middle French rabouillet (“baby rabbit”) and in French rabot (“plane”)), coming via Walloon Old French (reflected nowadays as Walloon robète (“rabbit”)), from Middle Dutch robbe ("rabbit; seal"; whence Modern Dutch rob (“rabbit", also "seal”)); also Middle Low German robbe, rubbe (“rabbit”), and the later German Low German Rubbe, Robb (“seal”), West Frisian robbe (“seal”), Saterland Frisian Rubbe (“seal”), North Frisian rob (“seal”), borrowed into German Robbe (“seal”). Meant "young rabbit" until the 19th c., when it came to replace the original general term cony, owing to the latter's resemblance to and use as a euphemism for cunny, "vulva" (compare ass and donkey). Note that there is no inherited Germanic word for rabbits, since hares are the only leporids native to Britain (as with all of Europe outside the Iberian Peninsula and southwest France); rabbits were introduced from France in the late Middle Ages, likely after the Norman Invasion. (Fittingly, hare is indeed inherited from Proto-Germanic.)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- arbbit
- rabbitt
- rabbti
- rabibt
- rabit
- rbabit
- rrabbit
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of rabbit - 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.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "rabbit", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (7 here; floor ≥5).
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.