stove
/stəʊv/
"stove" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stove” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #11,128 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #11,128
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room.
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 | stove |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stəʊv/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #11,128 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stove” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stove is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stəʊv/. Corpus data places it at rank #11,128 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 5 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 stove, with forms such as "sotve", "sstove", and "stoev". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "stow", "style", "swore", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle Dutch stove and/or Middle Low German stove (compare Dutch stoof (“foot stove”), German Low German Stuve, Stuuv), both from Proto-West Germanic *stubu (“heated room, bathroom, stove”), further origin uncertain. The Germanic words are very old, an… The correct English form is stove, spelled S-T-O-V-E.
Definition
- 1A heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room.
- 2A device for heating food, (UK) a cooker.
- 3A stovetop, with hotplates.
- 4A hothouse (heated greenhouse).
- 5A house or room artificially warmed or heated.
Etymology
From Middle Dutch stove and/or Middle Low German stove (compare Dutch stoof (“foot stove”), German Low German Stuve, Stuuv), both from Proto-West Germanic *stubu (“heated room, bathroom, stove”), further origin uncertain. The Germanic words are very old, and are the source of the Slavic and Romance terms. It is often speculated that the Germanic terms were borrowed from Vulgar Latin *extūfa, *extūfāre (“to heat with steam”), from Latin ex- + *tūfus (“hot vapor”), from Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos, “fever”). Cognates Cognate with Old English stofa (“bathroom, bathhouse”), stufbæþ (“hot-air bath”), Old High German stuba (“heated room, bathroom”) (whence German Stube (“living room, room, parlour”), Hungarian szoba (“room”)), Old Norse stofa (whence Danish stue (“living room, room”), Faroese stova (“living room, house”), Icelandic stofa (“living room”), Norwegian Bokmål stue (“cottage, cabin, living room”), Norwegian Nynorsk stove (“cottage, cabin, living room”), Swedish stuga (“cottage, cabin, living room”)). Doublet of stufa.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sotve,sstove,stoev,stovve,sttove,stvoe,tsove
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of stove - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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
How do you spell "stove"?
What does "stove" mean?
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Using “stove”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-O-V-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /stəʊv/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “stow” - see the side-by-side comparison. stove vs stow
- 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.