sheriff
/ˈʃɛɹɪf/
"sheriff" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sheriff” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,550 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #5,550
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - (High Sheriff) An official of a shire or county office, responsible for carrying out court orders, law enforcement and other duties.
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 | sheriff |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈʃɛɹɪf/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #5,550 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sheriff” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sheriff is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈʃɛɹɪf/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,550 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for sheriff, with forms such as "hseriff", "sehriff", and "sheirff". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 2 confusable-pair relationships, "serif", "sharif", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English shirreve, in turn inherited from Old English sċīrġerēfa, corresponding to shire + reeve. There is no etymological connection to Sharif (Arabic شَرِيف (šarīf)), an Arabic title of honour with cognates in other languages, includi… The correct English form is sheriff, spelled S-H-E-R-I-F-F.
Definition
- 1(High Sheriff) An official of a shire or county office, responsible for carrying out court orders, law enforcement and other duties.
- 2A judge in the sheriff court, the court of a county or sheriffdom.
- 3A government official, usually responsible for law enforcement in their county and for administration of the county jail, sometimes an officer of the court, usually elected.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English shirreve, in turn inherited from Old English sċīrġerēfa, corresponding to shire + reeve. There is no etymological connection to Sharif (Arabic شَرِيف (šarīf)), an Arabic title of honour with cognates in other languages, including Persian, Punjabi, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hseriff,sehriff,sheirff,sherfif,sherif,sherriff,shheriff,shreiff,ssheriff
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sheriff - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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
How do you spell "sheriff"?
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Using “sheriff”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-E-R-I-F-F - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈʃɛɹɪf/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “serif” - see the side-by-side comparison. sheriff vs serif
- 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.