sky
/skaɪ/
"sky" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sky” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,968 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,968
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The atmosphere above a given point, especially as visible from the surface of the Earth as the place where the sun, moon, stars, and clouds are seen.
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 | sky |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /skaɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,968 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sky” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sky is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /skaɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,968 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 edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for sky, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "SS", "SP", 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 sky (“sky; cloud; mist”), also spelled ski, skie, [and other forms], from Old Norse ský (“cloud”), from Proto-Germanic *skiwją (“cloud; sky”), from *skiwô (“cloud; cloud cover, haze; sky”) (whence Old English sċēo (“c… The correct English form is sky, spelled S-K-Y.
Definition
- 1The atmosphere above a given point, especially as visible from the surface of the Earth as the place where the sun, moon, stars, and clouds are seen.
- 2With a descriptive word: the part of the sky which can be seen from a specific place or at a specific time; its climate, condition, etc.
- 3Usually preceded by the: the abode of God or the gods, angels, the souls of deceased people, etc.; heaven; also, powers emanating from heaven.
- 4Ellipsis of sky blue.
- 5The set of all lightlike lines (or directions) passing through a given point in space-time.
- 6In an art gallery: the upper rows of pictures that cannot easily be seen; also, the place where such pictures are hung.
- 7A cloud.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English sky (“sky; cloud; mist”), also spelled ski, skie, [and other forms], from Old Norse ský (“cloud”), from Proto-Germanic *skiwją (“cloud; sky”), from *skiwô (“cloud; cloud cover, haze; sky”) (whence Old English sċēo (“cloud”) and Middle English skew (“air; sky; (rare) cloud”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewH- (“to cover; to conceal, hide”). Partly displaced Old English heofon, which survives in the reflex heaven, still sometimes used in the sense of sky, but usually in high or poetic register. The verb is derived from the noun. Cognates The English word is cognate with Old English scēo (“cloud”), Old Saxon scio, skio, skeo (“light cloud cover”), Danish, Swedish and Norwegian Bokmål sky (“cloud”), Old Irish ceo (“mist, fog”), Irish ceo (“mist, fog”). It is also related to Old English scūa (“shadow, darkness”), Latin obscūrus (“dark, shadowy”), Sanskrit स्कुनाति (skunāti, “he covers”). See also hide, hose, house, hut, shoe.
This word in other languages
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 “sky”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-K-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /skaɪ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “so” - see the side-by-side comparison. sky vs so
- 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.