told
/təʊld/
"told" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“told” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #268 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #268
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past and past participle of tell
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 | told |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /təʊld/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #268 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “told” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for told is 4 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /təʊld/. Corpus data places it at rank #268 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "simple past and past participle of tell".
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for told, with forms such as "otld", "tlod", and "todl". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "too", "top", "tom", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English tolde, talde (first and third person singular preterite), from Old English tealde (first and third person singular preterite), from Proto-Germanic *talid-, preterite stem of Proto-Germanic *taljaną (“to count; tell”), equivalent to tell … The correct English form is told, spelled T-O-L-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of tell
Etymology
From Middle English tolde, talde (first and third person singular preterite), from Old English tealde (first and third person singular preterite), from Proto-Germanic *talid-, preterite stem of Proto-Germanic *taljaną (“to count; tell”), equivalent to tell + -ed.
Synonyms
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: otld,tlod,todl,toldd,tolld,ttold
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of told - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “told”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-O-L-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /təʊld/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “too” - see the side-by-side comparison. told vs too
- 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.