souq
/suːk/
"souq" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“souq” is uncommon English (frequency #98,742 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #98,742
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A street market, particularly in Arabic- and Somali-speaking countries; a place where people buy and sell goods.
Corpus desk
Index EN-souq · souq · English
souq · rank #98,742 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #98,742
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH sonority
Nearest frequency peer: sonority (-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.
Long-tail ranks near “souq”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Soja
Soja
1,263 corpus weight
- Sokal
Sokal
1,262 corpus weight
- Soloway
Soloway
1,261 corpus weight
- sonority
sonority
1,260 corpus weight
- souq
souq
1,259 corpus weight
- spherically
spherically
1,257 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “souq” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | souq |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /suːk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #98,742 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “souq” in English
Rare enough to double-check
souq is uncommon English at frequency #98,742 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /suːk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A street market, particularly in Arabic- and Somali-speaking countries; a place where people buy and sell goods.".
souq doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Arabic سُوق (sūq, “market”), from Aramaic שוקא or ܫܘܩܐ (šūqā’, “street, market”), from Akkadian 𒋻 (sūqu, “street”), from 𒊓𒆸 (s(i)āqu, “narrow”). Doublet of shuk. The correct English form is souq, spelled S-O-U-Q.
Definition
- 1A street market, particularly in Arabic- and Somali-speaking countries; a place where people buy and sell goods.
Etymology
From Arabic سُوق (sūq, “market”), from Aramaic שוקא or ܫܘܩܐ (šūqā’, “street, market”), from Akkadian 𒋻 (sūqu, “street”), from 𒊓𒆸 (s(i)āqu, “narrow”). Doublet of shuk.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "souq", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).