stress
/stɹɛs/
"stress" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stress” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,923 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,923
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 18
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A physical, chemical, infective agent aggressing an organism.
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 | stress |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stɹɛs/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,923 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 18 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stress” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stress is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stɹɛs/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,923 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for stress, with forms such as "srtess", "sstress", and "sterss". 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 18 confusable-pair relationships, "strips", "strewn", "stressed", 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 a shortening of Middle English destresse, borrowed from Old French destrecier, from Latin distringō (“to stretch out”). This form probably coalesced with Middle English stresse, from Old French estrece (“narrowness”), from Vulgar Latin *strictia, from … The correct English form is stress, spelled S-T-R-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1A physical, chemical, infective agent aggressing an organism.
- 2Aggression toward an organism resulting in a response in an attempt to restore previous conditions.
- 3The internal distribution of force across a small boundary per unit area of that boundary (pressure) within a body. It causes strain or deformation and is typically symbolised by σ or τ.
- 4Force externally applied to a body which cause internal stress within the body.
- 5Emotional pressure suffered by a human being or other animal.
- 6A suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound, word or word group by means of of loudness, duration or pitch; phonological prominence.
- 7The suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound by means of loudness and/or duration; phonological prominence phonetically achieved by means of dynamics as distinct from pitch.
- 8Emphasis placed on a particular point in an argument or discussion (whether spoken or written).
- 9Obsolete form of distress.
- 10distress; the act of distraining; also, the thing distrained.
Etymology
From a shortening of Middle English destresse, borrowed from Old French destrecier, from Latin distringō (“to stretch out”). This form probably coalesced with Middle English stresse, from Old French estrece (“narrowness”), from Vulgar Latin *strictia, from Latin strictus (“narrow”). In the sense of "mental strain" or “disruption”, used occasionally in the 1920s and 1930s by psychologists, including Walter Cannon (1934); in “biological threat”, used by endocrinologist Hans Selye, by metaphor with stress in physics (force on an object) in the 1930s, and popularized by same in the 1950s.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: srtess,sstress,sterss,stres,strress,strses,sttress,tsress
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of stress - 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 “stress”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-R-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /stɹɛs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “strips” - see the side-by-side comparison. stress vs strips
- 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.