spake
/speɪk/
"spake" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“spake” is uncommon English (frequency #50,243 among 54,294 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,243
- frequency rank, English
- 54,294
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Quiet; tame.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spake |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /speɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #50,243 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “spake” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
spake is uncommon English at frequency #50,243 among 54,294 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /speɪk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for spake in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English spake, spak, from Old Norse spakr (“wise, gentle, quiet”), from Proto-Germanic *spakaz (“wise, clever”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peǵ- (“to understand; intelligent, attentive”). Cognate with Swedish spak (“manageable”), Danish spag (… The correct English form is spake, spelled S-P-A-K-E.
Definition
- 1Quiet; tame.
- 2Ready; prompt.
Etymology
From Middle English spake, spak, from Old Norse spakr (“wise, gentle, quiet”), from Proto-Germanic *spakaz (“wise, clever”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peǵ- (“to understand; intelligent, attentive”). Cognate with Swedish spak (“manageable”), Danish spag (“quiet, gentle, timid, tame”).
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 “spake”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-P-A-K-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /speɪk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.