shire
/ʃaɪə/
"shire" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shire” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #15,700 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #15,700
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An administrative area or district between about the 5th to the 11th century, subdivided into hundreds or wapentakes and jointly governed by an ealdorman and a sheriff; also, a present-day area cor...
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 | shire |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃaɪə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #15,700 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “shire” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shire is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃaɪə/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,700 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for shire, with forms such as "hsire", "shhire", and "shier". 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, "sir", "sie", "sure", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English schire (“region, shire, county”) [and other forms], from Old English sċīr (“administrative region under an alderman and sheriff, shire; district under a governor or official; status of an official, office”) [and other… The correct English form is shire, spelled S-H-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1An administrative area or district between about the 5th to the 11th century, subdivided into hundreds or wapentakes and jointly governed by an ealdorman and a sheriff; also, a present-day area corresponding to such a historical district; a county; especially (England), a county having a name ending in -shire.
- 2The people living in a shire (noun sense 1.1) considered collectively.
- 3The general area in which a person comes from or lives.
- 4An administrative area or district in other countries.
- 5An administrative area or district in other countries.
- 6Ellipsis of shire horse (“a draught horse of a tall British breed, usually bay, black, or grey”).
- 7A district or province governed by a person; specifically (Christianity), the province of an archbishop, the see of a bishop, etc.
- 8A region; also, a country.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English schire (“region, shire, county”) [and other forms], from Old English sċīr (“administrative region under an alderman and sheriff, shire; district under a governor or official; status of an official, office”) [and other forms], from Proto-West Germanic *skīru (“district; status of an official, office”); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to Latin cūra (“care, concern; administration, charge, management; command, office”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kʷeys- (“to heed; to see”). The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsire,shhire,shier,shirre,shrie,sihre,sshire
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of shire - 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 “shire”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-I-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ʃaɪə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “sir” - see the side-by-side comparison. shire vs sir
- 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.