sweet potato
/ˈswiːt pəˈteɪ.təʊ/
"sweet-potato" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sweet potato” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A tropical perennial American vine, Ipomoea batatas, having a fleshy tuber.
Corpus desk
Index EN-sweet-potato · sweet potato · English
sweet potato · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sweet potato |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈswiːt pəˈteɪ.təʊ/ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sweet potato” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
sweet potato is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈswiːt pəˈteɪ.təʊ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for sweet potato, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is sweet potato, spelled S-W-E-E-T- -P-O-T-A-T-O.
Definition
- 1A tropical perennial American vine, Ipomoea batatas, having a fleshy tuber.
- 2The tuber of this plant cooked as a vegetable.
- 3An ocarina.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sweet potato appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The sweet potato is the article referred to as potato by Shakespeare and other English writers, previous to the middle of the seventeenth century.
I go back to the kitchen and find a knife, still smeared with sweet potato and bits of pheasant meat.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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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.