shore
/ʃɔː/
"shore" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shore” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #4,122 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #4,122
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Land adjoining a non-flowing body of water, such as an ocean, lake or pond.
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 | shore |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃɔː/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #4,122 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “shore” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shore is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃɔː/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,122 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 2 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 shore, with forms such as "hsore", "shhore", and "shoer". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "soe", "sor", "some", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English schore, from Old English *sċora (attested as sċor- in placenames), from Proto-Germanic *skurô (“rugged rock, cliff, high rocky shore”). Possibly related to Old English sċieran (“to cut”), which survives today as English shear. Cognate wi… The correct English form is shore, spelled S-H-O-R-E.
Definition
- 1Land adjoining a non-flowing body of water, such as an ocean, lake or pond.
- 2Land, usually near a port.
Etymology
From Middle English schore, from Old English *sċora (attested as sċor- in placenames), from Proto-Germanic *skurô (“rugged rock, cliff, high rocky shore”). Possibly related to Old English sċieran (“to cut”), which survives today as English shear. Cognate with Middle Dutch scorre (“land washed by the sea”), Middle Low German schor (“shore, coast, headland”), Middle High German schorre ("rocky crag, high rocky shore"; > German Schorre, Schorren (“towering rock, crag”)), and Limburgish sjaor (“riverbank”). Maybe connected with Norwegian Bokmål skjær.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsore,shhore,shoer,shorre,shroe,sohre,sshore
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of shore - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “shore”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-O-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ʃɔː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “soe” - see the side-by-side comparison. shore vs soe
- 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.