tomb
/tuːm/
"tomb" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tomb” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,495 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #8,495
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A small building, or a room within one, for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except ...
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 | tomb |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tuːm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #8,495 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tomb” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for tomb is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tuːm/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,495 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for tomb, with forms such as "otmb", "tmob", and "tobm". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "too", "top", "toy", 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 Middle English tombe, toumbe, borrowed from Old French tombe, from Latin tumba from Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos, “a sepulchral mound, tomb, grave”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂- (“to swell”). The verb is from Middle English tomben. The correct English form is tomb, spelled T-O-M-B.
Definition
- 1A small building, or a room within one, for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except for its entrance) in a cemetery, or it may be inside a church proper or in its crypt. Single tombs may be permanently sealed; those for families (or other groups) have doors for access whenever needed.
- 2A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited.
- 3One who keeps secrets.
- 4Death (literary)
Etymology
From Middle English tombe, toumbe, borrowed from Old French tombe, from Latin tumba from Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos, “a sepulchral mound, tomb, grave”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂- (“to swell”). The verb is from Middle English tomben.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: otmb,tmob,tobm,tombb,tommb,ttomb
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of tomb - 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 “tomb”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-O-M-B - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /tuːm/ (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. tomb 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.