ray
/ɹeɪ/
"ray" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ray” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,087 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,087
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A beam of light or radiation.
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 | ray |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹeɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #2,087 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ray” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ray is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹeɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,087 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No generated misspelling entries exist for ray in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "re", "RS", "rd", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Via Middle English, borrowed from Old French rai, from Latin radius (“staff, stake, spoke”). Doublet of radius. The correct English form is ray, spelled R-A-Y.
Definition
- 1A beam of light or radiation.
- 2A rib-like reinforcement of bone or cartilage in a fish's fin.
- 3One of the spheromeres of a radiate, especially one of the arms of a starfish or an ophiuran.
- 4A radiating part of a flower or plant; the marginal florets of a compound flower, such as an aster or a sunflower; one of the pedicels of an umbel or other circular flower cluster; radius.
- 5Sight; perception; vision; from an old theory of vision, that sight was something which proceeded from the eye to the object seen.
- 6A line extending indefinitely in one direction from a point.
Etymology
Via Middle English, borrowed from Old French rai, from Latin radius (“staff, stake, spoke”). Doublet of radius.
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 “ray”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-A-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɹeɪ/ (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. ray 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.