spit
/spɪt/
"spit" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“spit” has 6 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #8,987. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #8,987
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A thin metal or wooden rod on which meat is skewered for cooking, often over a fire.
Corpus desk
Index EN-spit · spit · English
spit · rank #8,987 · 6 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #8,987
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 6 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH spiral
Nearest frequency peer: spiral (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “spit”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Sherman
Sherman
91,017 corpus weight
- spinal
spinal
91,016 corpus weight
- spiral
spiral
91,015 corpus weight
- spit
spit
91,014 corpus weight
- splash
splash
91,013 corpus weight
- stretching
stretching
91,012 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “spit” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | spit |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /spɪt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #8,987 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “spit” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 6 spelling variants around spit (IPA /spɪt/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #8,987 among 6,566 “S” headwords. Wiktionary lists 2 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for spit, with forms such as "psit", "sipt", and "spitt". 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, "spy", "STI", "Sui", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is from Middle English spit, spite, spete, spette, spyte, spytte (“rod on which meat is cooked; rod used as a torture instrument; short spear; point of a spear; spine in the fin of a fish; pointed object; dagger symbol; land projecting into the sea… The correct English form is spit, spelled S-P-I-T.
Definition
- 1A thin metal or wooden rod on which meat is skewered for cooking, often over a fire.
- 2A generally low, narrow, pointed, usually sandy peninsula or bar.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how spit appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
They roaſt a fowl, by running a piece of wood through it, by way of ſpit, and holding it over a briſk fire, until the feathers are burnt of, when it is ready for eating, in their taſte.
An Engliſh family in the country, [...] would receive you with an unquiet hoſpitality, and an anxious politeneſs; and after waiting for a hurry-ſcurry derangement of cloth, table, plates, ſideboard, pot and ſpit, would give you perhaps ſo good a dinner, that none of the family, between anxiety and fatigue, could ſupply one word of converſation, and you wo…
Etymology
The noun is from Middle English spit, spite, spete, spette, spyte, spytte (“rod on which meat is cooked; rod used as a torture instrument; short spear; point of a spear; spine in the fin of a fish; pointed object; dagger symbol; land projecting into the sea”), from Old English spitu (“rod on which meat is cooked; spit”), from Proto-Germanic *spitō (“rod; skewer; spike”), *spituz (“rod on which meat is cooked; stick”), from Proto-Indo-European *speyd-, *spey- (“sharp; sharp stick”). The English word is cognate with Dutch spit, Low German Spitt (“pike, spear; spike; skewer; spit”), Danish spid, Swedish spett (“skewer; spit; type of crowbar”). The verb is derived from the noun, or from Middle English spiten (“to put on a spit; to impale”), from spit, spite: see above. The English verb is cognate with Middle Dutch speten, spitten (modern Dutch speten), Middle Low German speten (Low German spitten, modern German spießen (“to skewer, to spear”), spissen (now dialectal)) and Danish spidde.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- psit
- sipt
- spitt
- sppit
- spti
- sspit
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of spit - 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 "spit", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (6 here; floor ≥5).
What to do next
You've looked up "spit". Here's where to go from here.
- "spit" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "spy". View pair
- 6 edit-distance misspelling variants are generated for spell-check research on this headword. See variants
- Usage frequency rank #8,987 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more English words in the "S" letter cohort. S–Z browse
- PlainSpell rotates a curated Word of the Day from the English corpus, a passive way to discover vocabulary. Word of the Day
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.