shunt
/ʃʌnt/
"shunt" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shunt” has 8 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #36,339. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #36,339
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to.
Corpus desk
Index EN-shunt · shunt · English
shunt · rank #36,339 · 8 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #36,339
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 8 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH severing
Nearest frequency peer: severing (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “shunt”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- serrano
serrano
63,665 corpus weight
- serrated
serrated
63,664 corpus weight
- severing
severing
63,663 corpus weight
- shunt
shunt
63,662 corpus weight
- Smyrna
Smyrna
63,661 corpus weight
- SNES
SNES
63,660 corpus weight
What this shows “shunt” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | shunt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ʃʌnt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #36,339 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “shunt”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 8 spelling variants around shunt (IPA /ʃʌnt/), averb. Corpus frequency is #36,339 among 6,566 “S” headwords. Wiktionary lists 10 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for shunt, with forms such as "hsunt", "shhunt", and "shnut". 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, "sun", "shut", "suit", 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 schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either: * possibly a back-formation from Middle English schonen (“to avoid, refuse, hate, fear”), from Old English sċunian, sċyniġan; see shun. Or * an alteration of Middle Englis… The correct English form is shunt, spelled S-H-U-N-T.
Definition
- 1To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to.
- 2To divert to a less important place, position, or state.
- 3To provide with a shunt.
- 4To move data in memory to a physical disk.
- 5To divert electric current by providing an alternative path.
- 6To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages, etc. from one train to another.
- 7To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car.
- 8To divert the flow of a body fluid.
- 9To turn aside or away; to divert.
- 10To carry on arbitrage between the London stock exchange and provincial stock exchanges.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how shunt appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
For we are all shunting—shunting—shunting / We're all shunting in this queer world of ours. / Nations are shunted like to our railway carriages: / As Napoleon shunted la belle France into war; / Princes are shunted into royal marriages; / Kings and Queens are shunted just like a railway car.
The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up on him. […] Thinks I, it won't do to run into him, so I shunted to one side and tore along. By and by I closed up abreast of his tail.
Etymology
From Middle English schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either: * possibly a back-formation from Middle English schonen (“to avoid, refuse, hate, fear”), from Old English sċunian, sċyniġan; see shun. Or * an alteration of Middle English *schunden, *schynden, from Old English sċyndan, sċendan (“to hasten, hurry”) (as in āsċyndan (“to remove, take away”), from Proto-West Germanic *skundijan, from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to impel, hasten”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewt- (“to rattle, shake”). * from unrecorded Old English *sċunettan, a derivative of sċunian (“to shun, avoid”). As regards the noun sense, compare Middle English shunt (“swerve; sudden jerk”), derived from the verb.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- hsunt
- shhunt
- shnut
- shunnt
- shuntt
- shutn
- sshunt
- suhnt
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of shunt - 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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "shunt", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (8 here; floor ≥5).