sup
/sʌp/
"sup" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sup” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #13,818 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #13,818
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To sip; to take a small amount of food or drink into the mouth, especially with a spoon.
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 | sup |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /sʌp/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #13,818 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sup” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sup is 3 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sʌp/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,818 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "To sip; to take a small amount of food or drink into the mouth, especially with a spoon.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for sup in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "SW", "SV", "Sy", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The verb is from Middle English soupen, from Old English sūpan (“to sip, drink, taste”), from Proto-Germanic *sūpaną (compare Dutch zuipen (“to drink, tipple, booze”), German saufen (“to drink, booze”), Swedish supa (“to drink, swallow”)), from Proto-Indo-E… The correct English form is sup, spelled S-U-P.
Definition
- 1To sip; to take a small amount of food or drink into the mouth, especially with a spoon.
Etymology
The verb is from Middle English soupen, from Old English sūpan (“to sip, drink, taste”), from Proto-Germanic *sūpaną (compare Dutch zuipen (“to drink, tipple, booze”), German saufen (“to drink, booze”), Swedish supa (“to drink, swallow”)), from Proto-Indo-European *sub-, compare Sanskrit सूप (sū́pa, “soup, broth”), from *sewe (“to take liquid”). More at suck. The noun is from the verb. There is no evidence of continuity with Old English supa. Compare Middle English soupe, from Old English sūpe, which has the same meaning as Middle English sope (“a mouthful or small amount of drink”), from Old English sopa, whence sop.
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 “sup”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-U-P - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /sʌp/ (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. sup 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.