shown
/ʃəʊn/
"shown" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shown” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,354 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #1,354
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - past participle of show
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 | shown |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ʃəʊn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,354 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “shown” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shown is 5 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃəʊn/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,354 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "past participle of show".
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for shown, with forms such as "hsown", "shhown", and "shonw". 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, "son", "sow", "soon", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English schauen, schewen (past participle), alternative form of schawid, schewed, past participle of Middle English schewen (“to show”). Morphologically equivalent to show + -n. The correct English form is shown, spelled S-H-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1past participle of show
Etymology
From Middle English schauen, schewen (past participle), alternative form of schawid, schewed, past participle of Middle English schewen (“to show”). Morphologically equivalent to show + -n.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsown,shhown,shonw,shownn,showwn,shwon,sohwn,sshown
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of shown - 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 “shown”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-O-W-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ʃəʊn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “son” - see the side-by-side comparison. shown vs son
- 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.