sulk

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for sulk is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sʌlk/. Corpus data places it at rank #50,254 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "To express ill humor or offence by remaining sullenly silent or withdrawn.".

No misspelling variants are generated for sulk in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: Back-formation from sulky, of uncertain origin. Probably from Middle English *sulke, *solke (attested in solcenesse (“idleness; laziness”), from Old English āsolcennys (“idleness; slothfulness; sluggishness; laziness”), from āsolcen (“sulky, languid”), from… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is sulk, spelled S-U-L-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.