sheep
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sheep", 5-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 "sheep" 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 "sheep" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sheep is aEnglishnoun. It means: A woolly ruminant of the genus Ovis. Pronounced /ʃiːp/. It ranks #5,264 in English word frequency. Often confused with ship and shop.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sheep |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃiːp/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,264 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sheep is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃiːp/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,264 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for sheep, with forms such as "hseep", "sehep", and "sheepp". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ship", "shop", "shoe", 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 schep, schepe, from Anglian Old English sċēp (West Saxon sċēap), from Proto-West Germanic *skāp, from Proto-Germanic *skēpą, of unknown origin. Perhaps from the same Scythian word (compare Ossetian цӕу (cæw, “goat”), Persian چپ… 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 sheep, spelled S-H-E-E-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A woolly ruminant of the genus Ovis.
- 2A member of the domestic species Ovis aries, the most well-known species of Ovis.
- 3A timid, shy person who is easily led by others.
- 4A religious adherent, a member of a congregation or religious community (compare flock).
- 5Sheepskin leather.
- 6A person who is easily understood by a speech recognition system; contrasted with goat.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English schep, schepe, from Anglian Old English sċēp (West Saxon sċēap), from Proto-West Germanic *skāp, from Proto-Germanic *skēpą, of unknown origin. Perhaps from the same Scythian word (compare Ossetian цӕу (cæw, “goat”), Persian چپش (čapiš, “yearling goat”)) which was borrowed into Albanian as cjap, sqap (“buck”) and into Slavic (compare Polish cap). After Kroonen, *skēpą is instead from the root of Proto-Germanic *skabaną (“to scratch”) via Kluge's law. Cognates Cognate with Scots sheep (“sheep”), Yola sheep, zheep (“sheep”), North Frisian schep, schäip, Sjip (“sheep”), Saterland Frisian Schäip, Skäip (“sheep”), West Frisian skiep (“sheep”), Alemannic German Schaf, Schooff (“sheep”), Bavarian Schof, Schouf, Schåf (“sheep”), Dutch schaap (“sheep”), German Schaf (“sheep”), German Low German Schaap (“sheep”), Limburgish Schoëp, sjaop (“sheep”), Luxembourgish Schof (“sheep”), Vilamovian siöf (“sheep”), Yiddish שאָף (shof, “sheep”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hseep,sehep,sheepp,shepe,shheep,ssheep
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sheep
Misspelling Variants of "sheep"
Frequency rank: #5,264 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: