rat
/ɹæt/
"rat" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“rat” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,446 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #5,446
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Any of the numerous members of several rodent families that usually have short limbs, a pointy snout, a long, hairless tail, and a body length greater than about 12 cm, or 5 inches.
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 | rat |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹæt/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,446 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “rat” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rat is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹæt/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,446 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for rat, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "re", "RS", "rd", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English ratte, rat, rotte, from Old English rætt, from Proto-West Germanic *ratt, from Proto-Germanic *rattaz, *rattō (compare West Frisian rôt, Dutch rat), of uncertain origin, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *Hreh₃d- (“to scrape, scratch, gn… The correct English form is rat, spelled R-A-T.
Definition
- 1Any of the numerous members of several rodent families that usually have short limbs, a pointy snout, a long, hairless tail, and a body length greater than about 12 cm, or 5 inches.
- 2A medium-sized rodent belonging to the genus Rattus.
- 3A person who is known for betrayal.
- 4An informant or snitch.
- 5A scab: a worker who acts against trade union policies.
- 6A person who routinely spends time at a particular location.
- 7A wad of shed hair used as part of a hairstyle.
- 8A roll of material used to puff out the hair, which is turned over it.
- 9Vagina, vulva.
- 10Ellipsis of muskrat.
Etymology
From Middle English ratte, rat, rotte, from Old English rætt, from Proto-West Germanic *ratt, from Proto-Germanic *rattaz, *rattō (compare West Frisian rôt, Dutch rat), of uncertain origin, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *Hreh₃d- (“to scrape, scratch, gnaw”). However, the rat may have been unknown in Northern Europe in antiquity, and the Proto-Germanic word may have referred to a different animal; see *rattaz for more. Attestation of this family of words begins in the 12th century. Some of the Germanic cognates show considerable consonant variation, e.g. Middle Low German ratte, radde; Middle High German rate, ratte, ratze. The irregularity may be symptomatic of a late dispersal of the word, although Kroonen accounts for it with a Proto-Germanic stem *raþō nom., *ruttaz gen., showing both ablaut and a Kluge's law alternation, with the variation arising from varying remodellings in the descendants. Kroonen states that this requires a Proto-Indo-European etymon in final *t and is incompatible with the usual derivation from Proto-Indo-European *Hreh₃d- (“to scrape, scratch, gnaw”).
This word in other languages
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 “rat”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-A-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɹæt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “re” - see the side-by-side comparison. rat vs re
- 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.