slice
/slaɪs/
"slice" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“slice” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,180 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,180
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - That which is thin and broad.
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 | slice |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /slaɪs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,180 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “slice” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for slice is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /slaɪs/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,180 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 17 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 slice, with forms such as "lsice", "silce", and "slcie". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "slip", "slim", "slid", 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 sclise, sklise, from Old French esclice, esclis (“a piece split off”), deverbal of esclicer, esclicier (“to splinter, split up”), from Frankish *slitjan (“to split up”), from Proto-Germanic *slitjaną, from Proto-Germanic *slītaną (“to sp… The correct English form is slice, spelled S-L-I-C-E.
Definition
- 1That which is thin and broad.
- 2A thin, broad piece cut off.
- 3An amount of anything.
- 4A piece of pizza, shaped like a sector of a circle.
- 5A snack consisting of pastry with savoury filling.
- 6A broad, thin piece of plaster.
- 7A knife with a thin, broad blade for taking up or serving fish; also, a spatula for spreading anything, as paint or ink.
- 8A salver, platter, or tray.
- 9A plate of iron with a handle, forming a kind of chisel, or a spadelike implement, variously proportioned, and used for various purposes, as for stripping the planking from a vessel's side, for cutting blubber from a whale, or for stirring a fire of coals; a slice bar; a peel; a fire shovel.
- 10One of the wedges by which the cradle and the ship are lifted clear of the building blocks to prepare for launching.
- 11A removable sliding bottom to a galley.
- 12A shot that (for the right-handed player) curves unintentionally to the right. See fade, hook, draw.
- 13A kind of cut shot where the bat makes an obtuse angle with the batter.
- 14Any of a class of heavy cakes or desserts made in a tray and cut out into squarish slices.
- 15A section of image taken of an internal organ using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CT (computed tomography), or various forms of x-ray.
- 16A hawk's or falcon's dropping which squirts at an angle other than vertical. (See mute.)
- 17A contiguous portion of an array.
Etymology
From Middle English sclise, sklise, from Old French esclice, esclis (“a piece split off”), deverbal of esclicer, esclicier (“to splinter, split up”), from Frankish *slitjan (“to split up”), from Proto-Germanic *slitjaną, from Proto-Germanic *slītaną (“to split, tear apart”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleyd- (“to rend, injure, crumble”). Akin to Old High German sliz, gisliz (“a tear, rip”), Old High German slīȥan (“to tear”), Old English slītan (“to split up”), modern French éclisse. More at slite, slit.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lsice,silce,slcie,slicce,sliec,sllice,sslice
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of slice - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “slice”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-L-I-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /slaɪs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “slip” - see the side-by-side comparison. slice vs slip
- 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.