saint
/seɪnt/
"saint" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“saint” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,584 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,584
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A deceased person whom a church or another religious group has officially recognised as especially holy or godly; one eminent for piety and virtue.
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 | saint |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /seɪnt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,584 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “saint” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for saint is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /seɪnt/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,584 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.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for saint, with forms such as "asint", "sainnt", and "saintt". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "san", "sit", "sat", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English saint, seint, sainct, seinct, sanct, senct, partly from Old English sanct (“saint”) and confluence with Old French saint, seinte (Modern French saint); both from Latin sānctus (“holy, consecrated”, in Late Latin as a noun, “a saint”), pa… The correct English form is saint, spelled S-A-I-N-T.
Definition
- 1A deceased person whom a church or another religious group has officially recognised as especially holy or godly; one eminent for piety and virtue.
- 2One of the blessed in heaven.
- 3A Christian; a faithful believer in the present world.
- 4Alternative letter-case form of Saint (“a Mormon, a Latter-day Saint”).
- 5A person with similarly overwhelming positive qualities; one who does good.
- 6A holy object.
Etymology
From Middle English saint, seint, sainct, seinct, sanct, senct, partly from Old English sanct (“saint”) and confluence with Old French saint, seinte (Modern French saint); both from Latin sānctus (“holy, consecrated”, in Late Latin as a noun, “a saint”), past participle of sancīre (“to render sacred, make holy”), akin to sacer (“holy, sacred”). Doublet of Sanctus. Displaced native Middle English halwe (“saint”) from Old English hālga (“saint, holy one”) (> Modern English hallow (“saint”)).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: asint,sainnt,saintt,saitn,sanit,siant,ssaint
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of saint - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “saint”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-A-I-N-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /seɪnt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “san” - see the side-by-side comparison. saint vs san
- 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.