s
/ɛs/
"s" is a 1-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“s” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #142) as a character. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #142
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - The nineteenth letter of the English alphabet, called ess and written in the Latin script.
Corpus desk
Index EN-s · s · English
s · rank #142 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #142
- LEN-SHORT 1 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH last
Nearest frequency peer: last (-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 “s”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- through
through
99,862 corpus weight
- you're
you're
99,861 corpus weight
- last
last
99,860 corpus weight
- s
s
99,859 corpus weight
- that's
that's
99,858 corpus weight
- while
while
99,857 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “s” 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 | 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
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for s is neighbouring look-alikes ("so", "SA", …), not just typos; it is acharacter pronounced /ɛs/. Frequency #142 among 6,566 “S” headwords. Gloss: "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.
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 September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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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.