she
/ʃiː/
"she" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“she” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #64 in English word frequency and used as a pronoun.
- #64
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The female (typically) person or animal previously mentioned or implied.
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 | she |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pronoun |
| IPA | /ʃiː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #64 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “she” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for she is 3 letters long, classified as a pronoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃiː/. Corpus data places it at rank #64 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
she doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "SI", "SS", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English sche, scho, hyo, ȝho (“she”), whence also Yorkshire dialectal shoo (“she”), Scots she, sho (“she”). Probably from Old English hēo (whence dialectal English hoo), with an irregular change in stress from hēo to heō /hjoː/, then a… The correct English form is she, spelled S-H-E.
Definition
- 1The female (typically) person or animal previously mentioned or implied.
- 2A ship or boat.
- 3A country, or sometimes a city, province, planet, etc.
- 4A thing, especially a machine or other object, such as a car, a computer, or (poetically) a season.
- 5A person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (used in a work, along with or in place of he, as an indefinite pronoun).
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English sche, scho, hyo, ȝho (“she”), whence also Yorkshire dialectal shoo (“she”), Scots she, sho (“she”). Probably from Old English hēo (whence dialectal English hoo), with an irregular change in stress from hēo to heō /hjoː/, then a development from /hj-/ to /ç/ to /ʃ-/, similar to the derivation of Shetland from Old Norse Hjaltland. In this case, she is from Proto-West Germanic *hiju, from Proto-Germanic *hijō f (“this, this one”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe-, *ḱey- (“this, here”), and is cognate with Saterland Frisian jo, ju, West Frisian hja, North Frisian jü, Danish hun, Swedish hon; more at he. A derivation from Old English sēo (“that one”, occasionally “she”) is also possible, though less likely. In that case, sēo would have undergone a change in stress from sēo to seō /sjoː/, then a change from /sj-/ to /ʃ-/, similar to the derivation of sure from Old French seur. It would then be cognate to Dutch zij and German sie. Neither etymology would be expected to yield the modern vocalism in /iː/ (the expected form would be shoo, which is in fact found dialectally). It may be due to influence from he, but both hēo and sēo also have rare variants (hīe and sīe) that may give modern English /iː/.
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 “she”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ʃiː/ (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. she 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.