say
/seɪ/
"say" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“say” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #135) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #135
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To pronounce.
Corpus desk
Index EN-say · say · English
say · rank #135 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #135
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH life
Nearest frequency peer: life (-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 neighbours of confusable “say”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- never
never
99,869 corpus weight
- those
those
99,868 corpus weight
- life
life
99,867 corpus weight
- say
say
99,866 corpus weight
- world
world
99,865 corpus weight
- down
down
99,864 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “say” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | say |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /seɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #135 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “say”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for say is neighbouring look-alikes ("so", "se", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced /seɪ/. Frequency #135 among 6,566 “S” headwords. 8 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for say, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "se", "SC", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English seyen, seien, seggen, from Old English seċġan (“to say, speak”), from Proto-West Germanic *saggjan, from Proto-Germanic *sagjaną (“to say”), from Proto-Indo-European *sokʷ-h₁-yé-, a suffixed o-grade form of *sekʷ- (“to say”). Cognates Co… The correct English form is say, spelled S-A-Y.
Definition
- 1To pronounce.
- 2To recite.
- 3To tell, either verbally or in writing.
- 4To indicate in a written form.
- 5To have a common expression; used in singular passive voice or plural active voice to indicate a rumor or well-known fact.
- 6Suppose, assume; used to mark an example, supposition or hypothesis.
- 7To speak; to express an opinion; to make answer; to reply.
- 8To bet as a wager on an outcome; by extension, used to express belief in an outcome by the speaker.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how say appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Please say your name slowly and clearly.
Martha, will you say the Pledge of Allegiance?
Etymology
From Middle English seyen, seien, seggen, from Old English seċġan (“to say, speak”), from Proto-West Germanic *saggjan, from Proto-Germanic *sagjaną (“to say”), from Proto-Indo-European *sokʷ-h₁-yé-, a suffixed o-grade form of *sekʷ- (“to say”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sai, seede, sii, sjide, sooi, säie (“to say”), West Frisian sizze (“to say”), Alemannic German ŝchége, ŝchegi, séege, säge, sägä (“to say”), Bavarian sogn, soon, sågn (“to say”), Dutch zeggen (“to say”), German sagen (“to say”), Low German seggen (“to say, tell”), Luxembourgish soen (“to say”), Yiddish זאָגן (zogn, “to say”), Danish sige (“to say”), Faroese siga (“to say”), Icelandic segja (“to say”), Jamtish segi (“to say”), Norwegian Bokmål si (“to say”), Norwegian Nynorsk segja, seia, seie (“to say, tell”), Swedish säga (“to say”). The adverb and interjection are from the verb.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "say", not the corpus desk frequency band.