stew
/stʃʉː/
"stew" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stew” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #15,516 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #15,516
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A cooking-dish used for boiling; a cauldron.
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 | stew |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stʃʉː/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #15,516 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stew” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stew is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stʃʉː/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,516 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 9 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 stew, with forms such as "setw", "sstew", and "steww". 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, "SW", "sue", "STR", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English stewe, stue, from Anglo-Norman estouve, Old French estuve (“bath, bathhouse”) (modern French étuve), from Medieval Latin stupha, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Vulgar Latin *extufāre, from ex- + Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos, “smoke, st… The correct English form is stew, spelled S-T-E-W.
Definition
- 1A cooking-dish used for boiling; a cauldron.
- 2A heated bath-room or steam-room; also, a hot bath.
- 3A brothel.
- 4A prostitute.
- 5A dish cooked by stewing.
- 6A pool in which fish are kept in preparation for eating.
- 7An artificial bed of oysters.
- 8A state of agitated excitement, worry, or confusion.
- 9Unwanted background noise recorded by the microphone.
Etymology
From Middle English stewe, stue, from Anglo-Norman estouve, Old French estuve (“bath, bathhouse”) (modern French étuve), from Medieval Latin stupha, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Vulgar Latin *extufāre, from ex- + Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos, “smoke, steam”), from τύφω (túphō, “to smoke”). See also Italian stufare, Portuguese estufar. Compare also Old English stuf-bæþ (“a hot-air bath, vapour bath”); see stove.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: setw,sstew,steww,sttew,stwe,tsew
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of stew - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “stew”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-E-W - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /stʃʉː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “SW” - see the side-by-side comparison. stew vs SW
- 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.