shad
/ʃæd/noun
shad is spelled S-H-A-D: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 35,320th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, shad means “Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of shad is shads.
How many letters and syllables are in shad?
| Letters | 4: S-H-A-D |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words; the 35,320th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is shad?
Shad appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 35,320th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce shad?
- /ʃæd/
Shad has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-shad.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with shad?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as shad.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: dash.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of shad
- shads plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does shad mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.
- 2
Any bluefish of the species Pomatomus saltatrix.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Shad in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense fishes of the herring family:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does shad come from?
From Middle English shadde, from Old English sċeadd, of uncertain origin. Compare Low German Schade (“shad, herring”), Scottish Gaelic sgadan (“herring”), Welsh ysgadan. Possibly from Scandinavian/North Germanic (compare dialectal Norwegian skadd (“small whitefish”), Old Norse skata (“kind of fish”)), but the order of borrowing is unclear and the ultimate origin of these words is obscure.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).