silk
/sɪlk/
"silk" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“silk” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #6,011 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #6,011
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A fine fiber excreted by the silkworm or other arthropod (such as a spider).
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 | silk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /sɪlk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #6,011 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “silk” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for silk is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sɪlk/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,011 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for silk, with forms such as "islk", "sikl", and "silkk". 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, "SL", "SK", "six", 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 silk, sylk, selk, selc, from Old English sioloc, seoloc, seolc (“silk”). The immediate source is uncertain; it probably reached English via the Baltic trade routes (cognates in Old Norse silki (> Danish silke, Swedish silke (“silk”)), Ru… The correct English form is silk, spelled S-I-L-K.
Definition
- 1A fine fiber excreted by the silkworm or other arthropod (such as a spider).
- 2A fine, soft cloth woven from silk fibers.
- 3Anything which resembles silk, such as the filiform styles of the female flower of maize, or the seed covering of bombaxes.
- 4The gown worn by a Senior (i.e. Queen's/King's) Counsel.
- 5A Queen's Counsel, King's Counsel or Senior Counsel.
- 6A pair of long silk sheets suspended in the air on which a performer performs tricks.
- 7The garments worn by a jockey displaying the colors of the horse's owner.
Etymology
From Middle English silk, sylk, selk, selc, from Old English sioloc, seoloc, seolc (“silk”). The immediate source is uncertain; it probably reached English via the Baltic trade routes (cognates in Old Norse silki (> Danish silke, Swedish silke (“silk”)), Russian шёлк (šolk), obsolete Lithuanian zilkai̇̃), all ultimately from Late Latin sēricus, from Ancient Greek σηρικός (sērikós), ultimately from an Oriental language (represented now by e.g. Chinese 絲 /丝 (sī, “silk”)). Compare Seres. Doublet of seric and serge.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: islk,sikl,silkk,sillk,slik,ssilk
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of silk - 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 “silk”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-I-L-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /sɪlk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “SL” - see the side-by-side comparison. silk vs SL
- 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.