sear
/sɪɚ/
"sear" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sear” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #41,374) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #41,374
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Dry; withered, especially of vegetation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-sear · sear · English
sear · rank #41,374 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #41,374
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH sequins
Nearest frequency peer: sequins (+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 “sear”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- SCO
SCO
58,630 corpus weight
- scrawny
scrawny
58,629 corpus weight
- sear
sear
58,627 corpus weight
- sequins
sequins
58,626 corpus weight
- Seri
Seri
58,625 corpus weight
- Shoreditch
Shoreditch
58,622 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “sear” 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 | sear |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /sɪɚ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #41,374 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “sear”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for sear is neighbouring look-alikes ("see", "set", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced /sɪɚ/. Frequency #41,374 among 6,566 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Dry; withered, especially of vegetation.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for sear, with forms such as "esar", "saer", and "searr". 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, "see", "set", "sex", 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 sere, seer, seere, from Old English sēar, sīere (“dry, sere, sear, withered, barren”), from Proto-West Germanic *sauʀ(ī), from Proto-Germanic *sauzaz (“dry”), from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂ews- (“dry, parched”) (also reconstructed as *h₂s… The correct English form is sear, spelled S-E-A-R.
Definition
- 1Dry; withered, especially of vegetation.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sear appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
There are in all but three vvayes of going thither [to the moon]. […] [The] third, Old Empedocles vvay; vvho vvhen he leaped into Ætna, having a drie ſeare bodie, and light, the ſmoake took him and vvhift him up into the Moone, vvhere he lives yet vvaving up and dovvne like a feather, all foot and embers comming out of that cole-pit; our Poet met him, and…
The autumn winds rushing / Waft the leaves that are searest, / But our flower was in flushing, / When blighting was nearest.
Etymology
From Middle English sere, seer, seere, from Old English sēar, sīere (“dry, sere, sear, withered, barren”), from Proto-West Germanic *sauʀ(ī), from Proto-Germanic *sauzaz (“dry”), from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂ews- (“dry, parched”) (also reconstructed as *h₂sews-). Cognate with Dutch zoor (“dry, rough”), Low German soor (“dry”), German sohr (“parched, dried up”), dialectal Norwegian søyr (“the desiccation and death of a tree”), Lithuanian saũsas (“dry”), Ukrainian сухий (suxyj, “dry”), Polish suchy (“dry”), Homeric Ancient Greek αὖος (aûos, “dry”). Doublet of sere and sare.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- esar
- saer
- searr
- ssear
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sear - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 "sear", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).