spike
/spaɪk/
"spike" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“spike” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,612 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,612
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A sort of very large nail.
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 | spike |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /spaɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,612 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “spike” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spike is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spaɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,612 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 19 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 spike, with forms such as "psike", "sipke", and "spiek". 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, "spin", "spit", "spoke", 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 spike, spyke, spik, from Old Norse spík (“spike, sprig”), from Proto-Germanic *spīkō (“stick, splinter, point”), from Proto-Indo-European *spey- (“to be pointed; sharp point, stick”). Cognate with Icelandic spík (“spike”), Swedish spik (… The correct English form is spike, spelled S-P-I-K-E.
Definition
- 1A sort of very large nail.
- 2A piece of pointed metal etc. set with points upward or outward.
- 3Anything resembling such a nail in shape.
- 4An ear of corn or grain.
- 5A kind of inflorescence in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis.
- 6A running shoe with spikes in the sole to provide grip.
- 7A sharp peak in a graph.
- 8A surge in power or in the price of a commodity, etc.; any sudden and brief change that would be represented by a sharp peak on a graph.
- 9The rod-like protrusion from a woman's high-heeled shoe that elevates the heel.
- 10A long nail for storing papers by skewering them; (by extension) the metaphorical place where rejected newspaper articles are sent.
- 11An attack from, usually, above the height of the net performed with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block.
- 12An adolescent male deer.
- 13The casual ward of a workhouse.
- 14Spike lavender.
- 15Synonym of endpin.
- 16A mark indicating where a prop or other item should be placed on stage.
- 17A small project that uses the simplest possible program to explore potential solutions.
- 18An excessively high church Anglican.
- 19a structure projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus, which binds to host cells.
Etymology
From Middle English spike, spyke, spik, from Old Norse spík (“spike, sprig”), from Proto-Germanic *spīkō (“stick, splinter, point”), from Proto-Indo-European *spey- (“to be pointed; sharp point, stick”). Cognate with Icelandic spík (“spike”), Swedish spik (“spike, nail”), Dutch spijker (“nail”), Old English spīcing (“spike”), and Latin spīca (“ear of corn”), which may have influenced some senses.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: psike,sipke,spiek,spikke,spkie,sppike,sspike
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of spike - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “spike”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-P-I-K-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /spaɪk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “spin” - see the side-by-side comparison. spike vs spin
- 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.