sea
/siː/
"sea" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sea” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #933 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #933
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A large body of salt water.
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 | sea |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /siː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #933 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sea” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sea is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /siː/. Corpus data places it at rank #933 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No generated misspelling entries exist for sea in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "SI", "SS", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English see, from Old English sǣ, from Proto-West Germanic *saiwi (“body of water”), from Proto-Germanic *saiwiz, itself either: * Derived from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂ey-wo- (“to be fierce, afflict”). Related to Latin saevus (“wild, f… The correct English form is sea, spelled S-E-A.
Definition
- 1A large body of salt water.
- 2A large body of salt water.
- 3A large body of salt water.
- 4A lake, especially if large or if salty or brackish.
- 5A single wave; billow.
- 6The swell of the sea, especially when high or rough.
- 7Living or used in or on the sea; of, near, or like the sea.
- 8Anything resembling the vastness or turbulence of the sea in mass, size or quantity.
- 9A constant flux of gluons splitting into quarks, which annihilate to produce further gluons.
- 10A large, dark plain of rock; a mare.
- 11A very large lake of liquid hydrocarbon.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English see, from Old English sǣ, from Proto-West Germanic *saiwi (“body of water”), from Proto-Germanic *saiwiz, itself either: * Derived from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂ey-wo- (“to be fierce, afflict”). Related to Latin saevus (“wild, fierce”), Tocharian B saiwe (“itch”), and Latvian sievs, sīvs (“sharp, biting”). More at sore. * Derived from Proto-Germanic *sīhwaną (“to percolate, filter”), from Proto-Indo-European *seykʷ-. Cognates Cognate with Yola zea, zee (“sea”), North Frisian See, sia, siie (“sea; lake”), Saterland Frisian See, Säi (“sea”), West Frisian see (“sea”), Cimbrian, Mòcheno sea (“lake”), Dutch zee (“sea”), German, German Low German See (“sea”), Limburgish Sië, zieë (“sea, ocean; lake”), Luxembourgish Séi (“lake”), West Flemish zji (“sea; seaside”), Danish sø (“sea; lake”), Faroese sjógvur (“sea; big wave”), Icelandic sjár, sjór, sær (“sea”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk sjø (“sea, ocean; lake”), Swedish sjö (“sea; lake; big wave”), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌹𐍅𐍃 (saiws, “lake, sea; marshland”).
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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Using “sea”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-E-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /siː/ (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. sea 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.