s
/ɛs/
"s" is a 1-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“s” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #142 in English word frequency and used as a character.
- #142
- frequency rank, English
- 1
- letter
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The nineteenth letter of the English alphabet, called ess and written in the Latin script.
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 | s |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Character |
| IPA | /ɛs/ |
| Letters | 1 |
| Frequency rank | #142 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “s” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for s is 1 letters long, classified as a character, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɛs/. Corpus data places it at rank #142 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "The nineteenth letter of the English alphabet, called ess and written in the Latin script.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for s, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "SA", "se", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is s, spelled S.
Definition
- 1The nineteenth letter of the English alphabet, called ess 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “s”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɛs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “so” - see the side-by-side comparison. s vs so
- 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.