sells
/sɛlz/
"sells" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sells” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #6,178 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #6,178
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - third-person singular simple present indicative of sell
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 | sells |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /sɛlz/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #6,178 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sells” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sells is 5 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sɛlz/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,178 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "third-person singular simple present indicative of sell".
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for sells, with forms such as "eslls", "sellss", and "sels". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ses", "sets", "sens", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is sells, spelled S-E-L-L-S.
Definition
- 1third-person singular simple present indicative of sell
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: eslls,sellss,sels,selsl,slels,ssells
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sells - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “sells”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-E-L-L-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /sɛlz/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “ses” - see the side-by-side comparison. sells vs ses
- 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.