rout
/ɹaʊt/
"rout" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“rout” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #25,914 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #25,914
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A group of people; a crowd, a throng, a troop; in particular (archaic), a group of people accompanying or travelling with someone.
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 | rout |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹaʊt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #25,914 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “rout” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rout is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹaʊt/. Corpus data places it at rank #25,914 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for rout, with forms such as "orut", "rotu", and "routt". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "RT", "run", "row", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English rout, route (“group of people associated with one another, company; entourage, retinue; army; group of soldiers; group of pirates; large number of people, crowd; throng; group of disreputable people, mob; riot; group … The correct English form is rout, spelled R-O-U-T.
Definition
- 1A group of people; a crowd, a throng, a troop; in particular (archaic), a group of people accompanying or travelling with someone.
- 2A group of animals, especially one which is lively or unruly, or made up of wild animals such as wolves; a flock, a herd, a pack.
- 3A group of disorganized things.
- 4A group of (often violent) criminals or gangsters; such people as a class; (more generally) a disorderly and tumultuous crowd, a mob; hence (archaic, preceded by the), the common people as a group, the rabble.
- 5A fashionable assembly; a large evening party, a soirée.
- 6A noisy disturbance; also, a disorderly argument or fight, a brawl; (uncountable) disturbance of the peace, commotion, tumult.
- 7An illegal assembly of people; specifically, three or more people who have come together intending to do something illegal, and who have taken steps towards this, regarded as more serious than an unlawful assembly but not as serious as a riot; the act of assembling in this manner.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English rout, route (“group of people associated with one another, company; entourage, retinue; army; group of soldiers; group of pirates; large number of people, crowd; throng; group of disreputable people, mob; riot; group of animals; group of objects; proper condition or manner”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman route, rute, Middle French rote, route, Old French rote, route, rute (“group of people, company; group of armed people; group of criminals; group of cattle”) (modern French route (obsolete)), from Latin rupta (compare Late Latin ruta, rutta (“group of marauders; riot; unlawful assembly”)), the feminine of ruptus (“broken; burst, ruptured”), the perfect passive participle of rumpō (“to break, burst, rupture, tear; to force open; (figurative) to annul; to destroy; to interrupt”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *Hrewp- (“to break; to tear (up)”). The English word is a doublet of route. The verb is derived from Middle English routen (“to assemble, congregate; of animals: to herd together; to regroup, make a stand against; to be riotous, to riot”) [and other forms], from rout, route (noun); see above.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: orut,rotu,routt,rrout,ruot
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of rout - 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 “rout”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-O-U-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɹaʊt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “RT” - see the side-by-side comparison. rout vs RT
- 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.