she
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "she", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "she" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "she" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
she is aEnglishpron. It means: The female (typically) person or animal previously mentioned or implied. Pronounced /ʃiː/. It ranks #64 in English word frequency. Often confused with so and SI.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | she |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pron |
| IPA | /ʃiː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #64 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for she is 3 letters long, classified as apron, 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.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for she in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "SI", "SS", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
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… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is she, spelled S-H-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
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
Frequency rank: #64 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "she"?
What does "she" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "she"?
How do you pronounce "she"?
What is the origin of the word "she"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: