sheng
/ʃʌŋ/
"sheng" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sheng” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #34,283 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #34,283
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A Chinese wind instrument, a free-reed mouth organ consisting of 13 or more bamboo pipes of various lengths, which are fixed at their bases in a wind chest made from a dried gourd (or, more recentl...
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 | sheng |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃʌŋ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #34,283 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sheng” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sheng is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃʌŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #34,283 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A Chinese wind instrument, a free-reed mouth organ consisting of 13 or more bamboo pipes of various lengths, which are fixed at their bases in a wind chest made from a dried gourd (or, more recentl...".
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for sheng, with forms such as "hseng", "sehng", and "shegn". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "song", "sing", "sung", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Mandarin 笙 (shēng). The correct English form is sheng, spelled S-H-E-N-G.
Definition
- 1A Chinese wind instrument, a free-reed mouth organ consisting of 13 or more bamboo pipes of various lengths, which are fixed at their bases in a wind chest made from a dried gourd (or, more recently, wood or chrome-plated brass).
Etymology
From Mandarin 笙 (shēng).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hseng,sehng,shegn,shengg,shenng,shheng,shneg,ssheng
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sheng - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “sheng”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-E-N-G - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ʃʌŋ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “song” - see the side-by-side comparison. sheng vs song
- 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.