sprue
/spɹuː/
"sprue" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sprue” is uncommon English (frequency #89,936 among 54,294 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #89,936
- frequency rank, English
- 54,294
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A tropical disease causing a sore throat and tongue, and disturbed digestion; psilosis.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sprue |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /spɹuː/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #89,936 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sprue” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
sprue is uncommon English at frequency #89,936 among 54,294 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /spɹuː/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A tropical disease causing a sore throat and tongue, and disturbed digestion; psilosis.".
sprue has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Dutch spruw, sprouw. First described by William Hillary. The correct English form is sprue, spelled S-P-R-U-E.
Definition
- 1A tropical disease causing a sore throat and tongue, and disturbed digestion; psilosis.
Etymology
From Dutch spruw, sprouw. First described by William Hillary.
Synonyms
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 “sprue”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-P-R-U-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /spɹuː/ (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.