sheet
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sheet", 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 "sheet" 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 "sheet" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sheet is aEnglishnoun. It means: A thin bed cloth used as a covering for a mattress or as a layer over the sleeper. Pronounced /ʃiːt/. It ranks #3,653 in English word frequency. Often confused with shit and shot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sheet |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃiːt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,653 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sheet is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃiːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,653 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for sheet, with forms such as "hseet", "sehet", and "sheett". 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, "shit", "shot", "shut", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English schete; partly from Old English sċīete (“a sheet, a piece of linen cloth”); partly from Old English sċēata (“a corner, angle; the lower corner of a sail, sheet”); and Old English sċēat (“a corner, angle”); all from Proto-Germanic *skauti… 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 sheet, spelled S-H-E-E-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A thin bed cloth used as a covering for a mattress or as a layer over the sleeper.
- 2A piece of paper, usually rectangular, that has been prepared for writing, artwork, drafting, wrapping, manufacture of packaging (boxes, envelopes, etc.), and for other uses. The word does not include scraps and irregular small pieces destined to be recycled, used for stuffing or cushioning or paper mache, etc. In modern books, each sheet of paper is typically folded in half, to produce two leaves and four pages. In the absence of folding, "leaf" and "sheet" are equivalent.
- 3A flat metal pan, often without raised edge, used for baking.
- 4A thin, flat piece or layer of solid material.
- 5A broad, flat expanse or covering of a material on a surface.
- 6An expanse of something.
- 7A line (rope) used to adjust the trim of a sail.
- 8A sail.
- 9The area of ice on which the game of curling is played.
- 10A layer of veneer.
- 11Precipitation of such quantity and force as to resemble a thin, virtually solid wall.
- 12An extensive bed of an eruptive rock intruded between, or overlying, other strata.
- 13The space in the forward or after part of a boat where there are no rowers.
- 14A distinct level or stage within a game.
Etymology
From Middle English schete; partly from Old English sċīete (“a sheet, a piece of linen cloth”); partly from Old English sċēata (“a corner, angle; the lower corner of a sail, sheet”); and Old English sċēat (“a corner, angle”); all from Proto-Germanic *skautijǭ, *skautaz (“corner, wedge, lap”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewd- (“to throw, shoot, pursue, rush”). Cognate with North Frisian skut (“the fold of a garment, lap, coattail”), West Frisian skoat (“sheet; sail; lap”), Dutch schoot (“the fold of a garment, lap, sheet”), German Low German Schote (“a line from the foot of a sail”), German Schoß (“the fold of a garment, lap”), Danish skød (“lap, skirt”), Icelandic skaut (“the corner of a cloth, a line from the foot of a sail, the skirt or sleeve of a garment, a hood”), Norwegian skaut (“headdress”), Swedish sköt (“sheet”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hseet,sehet,sheett,shet,shete,shheet,ssheet
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sheet
Misspelling Variants of "sheet"
Frequency rank: #3,653 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: