south
/saʊθ/
"south" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“south” has 7 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #392. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #392
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The direction towards the pole to the right-hand side of someone facing east, specifically 180°, or (on another celestial object) the direction towards the pole lying on the southern side of the in...
Corpus desk
Index EN-south · south · English
south · rank #392 · 7 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #392
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 7 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH problem
Nearest frequency peer: problem (-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 “south”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- office
office
99,612 corpus weight
- pay
pay
99,611 corpus weight
- problem
problem
99,610 corpus weight
- south
south
99,609 corpus weight
- true
true
99,608 corpus weight
- we're
we're
99,607 corpus weight
What this shows “south” 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 | south |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /saʊθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #392 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “south”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 7 spelling variants around south (IPA /saʊθ/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #392 among 6,566 “S” headwords. Wiktionary lists 4 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for south, with forms such as "osuth", "sotuh", and "souht". 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, "suh", "sth", "such", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English south, from Old English sūþ, from Proto-West Germanic *sunþr (“southern”), from Proto-Germanic *sunþrą (“south”), from Proto-Indo-European *sóh₂wl̥ (“sun”). Cognates Cognate with Scots sooth (“south”), Yola zouth (“south”), North Frisian… The correct English form is south, spelled S-O-U-T-H.
Definition
- 1The direction towards the pole to the right-hand side of someone facing east, specifically 180°, or (on another celestial object) the direction towards the pole lying on the southern side of the invariable plane.
- 2The southern region or area; the inhabitants thereof.
- 3In a church: the direction to the right-hand side of a person facing the altar.
- 4The negative or south pole of a magnet
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how south appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Germany is south of Denmark.
Just before independence (in 1955) the military garrison in the south rebelled and that was the beginning of a civil war between the north and the south ...
Etymology
From Middle English south, from Old English sūþ, from Proto-West Germanic *sunþr (“southern”), from Proto-Germanic *sunþrą (“south”), from Proto-Indo-European *sóh₂wl̥ (“sun”). Cognates Cognate with Scots sooth (“south”), Yola zouth (“south”), North Frisian sööd, Süđ, süüd (“south”), Saterland Frisian Sude, Suud (“south”), West Frisian súd (“south”), Dutch zuid (“south”), German Süd (“south”), Danish syd (“south”), Faroese, Icelandic suður (“south”), Norwegian Bokmål syd, sør (“south”), Norwegian Nynorsk sør (“south”), Swedish syd, söder (“south”); also with Irish súil (“eye”), Cornish howl (“sun”), Manx sooill (“eye”), Scottish Gaelic sùil (“eye”), Welsh haul (“sun”), Latin sōl (“sun”), Ancient Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios, “sun; east; day”), Czech slunce (“sun”), Polish słońce (“sun”), Russian солнце (solnce, “sun”), Serbo-Croatian сунце, sunce (“sun”), Slovene sonce (“sun”), Latgalian saule (“sun”), Latvian saũle (“sun”), Lithuanian sáulė (“sun”), Albanian diell (“sun”), Avestan 𐬵𐬎𐬎𐬀𐬭𐬆 (huuar^ə, “sun”), Persian خور (xwar, “sun”), Ossetian хор (xor), хур (xur, “sun”), Sanskrit सूर्य (sūrya, “sun”), Tocharian A swāñce (“beam, ray”), Tocharian B swāñco (“beam, ray”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- osuth
- sotuh
- souht
- southh
- soutth
- ssouth
- suoth
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of south - 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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "south", 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 (7 here; floor ≥5).