sepsis
/ˈsɛpsɪs/
"sepsis" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sepsis” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #28,714 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #28,714
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A serious medical condition in which the whole body is inflamed, causing injury to its own tissues and organs as a response to infection.
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 | sepsis |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɛpsɪs/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #28,714 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sepsis” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sepsis is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɛpsɪs/. Corpus data places it at rank #28,714 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A serious medical condition in which the whole body is inflamed, causing injury to its own tissues and organs as a response to infection.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for sepsis, with forms such as "espsis", "sepiss", and "seppsis". 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 5 confusable-pair relationships, "septic", "stasis", "semis", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: coined by Hippocrates From Ancient Greek σῆψις (sêpsis, “putrefaction”), from σήπειν (sḗpein, “to make rotten”), from σήψ (sḗps, “a kind of lizard; also a kind of serpent whose bite was alleged to cause putrefaction”). The correct English form is sepsis, spelled S-E-P-S-I-S.
Definition
- 1A serious medical condition in which the whole body is inflamed, causing injury to its own tissues and organs as a response to infection.
Etymology
coined by Hippocrates From Ancient Greek σῆψις (sêpsis, “putrefaction”), from σήπειν (sḗpein, “to make rotten”), from σήψ (sḗps, “a kind of lizard; also a kind of serpent whose bite was alleged to cause putrefaction”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: espsis,sepiss,seppsis,sepsiss,sepssi,sepssis,sespis,spesis,ssepsis
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sepsis - 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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Using “sepsis”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-E-P-S-I-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈsɛpsɪs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “septic” - see the side-by-side comparison. sepsis vs septic
- 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.