spit
/spɪt/
"spit" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“spit” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,987 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #8,987
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A thin metal or wooden rod on which meat is skewered for cooking, often over a fire.
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
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spit is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,987 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
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.
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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Using “spit”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-P-I-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /spɪt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “spy” - see the side-by-side comparison. spit vs spy
- 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.