staring
/ˈstɛəɹɪŋ/
"staring" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“staring” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,734 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #5,734
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - present participle and gerund of stare
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 | staring |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈstɛəɹɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #5,734 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “staring” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for staring is 7 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈstɛəɹɪŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,734 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "present participle and gerund of stare".
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for staring, with forms such as "satring", "sstaring", and "stairng". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "sting", "strong", "string", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is staring, spelled S-T-A-R-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1present participle and gerund of stare
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: satring,sstaring,stairng,starign,staringg,starinng,starnig,straing,sttaring,tsaring
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of staring - 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 “staring”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-A-R-I-N-G - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈstɛəɹɪŋ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “sting” - see the side-by-side comparison. staring vs sting
- 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.