stone
/stəʊ̯n/
"stone" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stone” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,676 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,676
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A hard earthen substance that can form rocks; especially, such substance when regarded as a building material.
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 | stone |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stəʊ̯n/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,676 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stone” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stone is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stəʊ̯n/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,676 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for stone, with forms such as "sotne", "sstone", and "stnoe". 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, "stop", "stun", "stow", 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 ston, stone, stan, from Old English stān, from Proto-West Germanic *stain, from Proto-Germanic *stainaz (“stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *steyh₂- (“to stiffen”). Cognates Cognate with Scots stane (“stone”), Yola sthoan (“stone”), Nort… The correct English form is stone, spelled S-T-O-N-E.
Definition
- 1A hard earthen substance that can form rocks; especially, such substance when regarded as a building material.
- 2A piece of such material: a rock or a pebble.
- 3A gemstone, a jewel, especially a diamond.
- 4A unit of weight equal to 14 pounds (≈6.3503 kilograms), formerly used for various commodities (wool, cheese, etc.), but now principally used for personal weight. Abbreviated as st.
- 5The central part of some fruits, particularly drupes; consisting of the seed and a hard endocarp layer.
- 6A hard, stone-like deposit.
- 7A playing piece made of any hard material, used in various board games such as backgammon and go.
- 8A dull light grey or beige, like that of some stones.
- 9A 42-pound, precisely shaped piece of granite with a handle attached, which is bowled down the ice.
- 10A monument to the dead; a gravestone or tombstone.
- 11A mirror, or its glass.
- 12A testicle.
- 13A stand or table with a smooth, flat top of stone, commonly marble, on which to arrange the pages of a book, newspaper, etc. before printing.
Etymology
From Middle English ston, stone, stan, from Old English stān, from Proto-West Germanic *stain, from Proto-Germanic *stainaz (“stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *steyh₂- (“to stiffen”). Cognates Cognate with Scots stane (“stone”), Yola sthoan (“stone”), North Frisian stean, stian, stiin, stiinj (“stone”), Saterland Frisian Steen (“stone”), West Frisian stien (“stone”), Alemannic German Steei (“rock, stone”), Bavarian Staa (“rock, stone”), Central Franconian Steen, Stään (“stone”), Dutch steen (“stone”), German Stein (“rock, stone”), German Low German Steen, Stein (“stone”), Luxembourgish Steen (“stone”), Vilamovian śtan (“stone”), Yiddish שטיין (shteyn, “stone”), Danish and Swedish sten (“stone”), Elfdalian stien (“stone”), Faroese steinur (“stone”), Gutnish stain (“rock, stone”), Icelandic steinn (“rock, stone”), Norwegian Bokmål stein, sten (“stone”), Norwegian Nynorsk steidn, stein (“stone”), Gothic 𐍃𐍄𐌰𐌹𐌽𐍃 (stains, “stone”). Compare also Ancient Greek στία (stía, “pebble”), στέαρ (stéar, “tallow”), Lithuanian sténgti (“to be able, make an effort; to oppose”), Russian стена́ (stená, “wall”), Albanian shtëng (“hardened or pressed matter”), Sanskrit स्तिया (stiyā, “still or stagnant water”). Doublet of stain, stean, and stein.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sotne,sstone,stnoe,stoen,stonne,sttone,tsone
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of stone - 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 “stone”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-O-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /stəʊ̯n/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “stop” - see the side-by-side comparison. stone vs stop
- 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.