tooth
/tuːθ/
"tooth" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tooth” has 6 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #6,305. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #6,305
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - A hard, calcareous structure present in the mouth of many vertebrate animals, generally used for biting and chewing food.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tooth · tooth · English
tooth · rank #6,305 · 6 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #6,305
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 6 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH toll
Nearest frequency peer: toll (-1 rank slots)
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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “tooth”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- tastes
tastes
93,699 corpus weight
- throws
throws
93,698 corpus weight
- toll
toll
93,697 corpus weight
- tooth
tooth
93,696 corpus weight
- torn
torn
93,695 corpus weight
- tragic
tragic
93,694 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “tooth” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | tooth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tuːθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #6,305 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tooth” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 6 spelling variants around tooth (IPA /tuːθ/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #6,305 among 3,151 “T” headwords. Wiktionary lists 9 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for tooth, with forms such as "ototh", "tooht", and "toothh". 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, "tot", "tote", "trot", 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 tothe, toth, tooth, from Old English tōþ (“tooth”), from Proto-West Germanic *tanþ (“tooth”), from Proto-Germanic *tanþs (“tooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃dónts (“tooth”). Related to tusk. Doublet of dent, dens, tind, and tine. Cogn… The correct English form is tooth, spelled T-O-O-T-H.
Definition
- 1A hard, calcareous structure present in the mouth of many vertebrate animals, generally used for biting and chewing food.
- 2A sharp projection on the blade of a saw or similar implement.
- 3A projection on the edge of a gear that meshes with similar projections on adjacent gears, or on the circumference of a cog that engages with a chain.
- 4Of a rope, the stickiness when in contact with another rope as in a knot.
- 5A projection or point in other parts of the body resembling the tooth of a vertebrate animal.
- 6A pointed projection from the margin of a leaf.
- 7The rough surface of some kinds of cel or other films that allows better adhesion of artwork.
- 8Liking, fondness (compare toothsome).
- 9An irreducible component of a comb that intersects the handle in exactly one point, that point being distinct from the unique point of intersection for any other tooth of the comb.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tooth appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Jute has more tooth than polypropylene.
Species XXXVI. Obliquaria bullata— (Unio bullata) […] Found at the falls of Ohio; rare; breadth almost two inches; cardinal and lamellar teeth like preceding species; apices rounded, decorticated, but not truncated
Etymology
From Middle English tothe, toth, tooth, from Old English tōþ (“tooth”), from Proto-West Germanic *tanþ (“tooth”), from Proto-Germanic *tanþs (“tooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃dónts (“tooth”). Related to tusk. Doublet of dent, dens, tind, and tine. Cognates Cognate with Scots tuith (“tooth”), North Frisian Ter, teän, tosch, toske, tuis, tus, tusch, täis (“tooth”), Saterland Frisian Tusk (“tooth”), West Frisian tosk (“tooth”), Bavarian Zåhn (“tooth”), Dutch tand (“tooth”), German Zahn (“tooth”), Limburgish tandj (“tooth”), Luxembourgish Zant (“tooth”), Vilamovian cōn (“tooth”), Yiddish צאָן (tson, “tooth”), Danish and Swedish tand (“tooth”), Faroese tonn (“tooth”), Icelandic tönn (“tooth”), Norn *tann, *tant (“tooth”), Norwegian Bokmål tann (“tooth”), Norwegian Nynorsk tann, tonn (“tooth”), Breton and Welsh dant (“tooth”), Cornish dans (“tooth”), Irish déad (“tooth”), Scottish Gaelic deud (“tooth”), Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, and Spanish diente (“tooth”), Aragonese dien (“tooth”), Catalan and French dent (“tooth”), Galician, Italian, and Portuguese dente (“tooth”), Romanian dinte (“tooth”), Latin dēns (“tooth”), Ancient Greek ὀδούς (odoús), ὀδών (odṓn, “tooth”), Lithuanian dantis (“tooth”), Belarusian дзясна́ (dzjasná, “gum”), Bulgarian and Russian десна (desna, “gum”), Czech dáseň (“gum”), Polish dziąsło (“gum”), Serbo-Croatian dȇsni (“gum”), Slovak ďasno (“gum”), Slovene dlesni (“gum”), Ukrainian я́сна (jásna, “gum”), Armenian ատամ (atam, “tooth”), Ossetian дӕндаг (dændag, “tooth”), Baluchi دنتان (dantán), دتھاں (datʰāⁿ, “tooth”), Central Kurdish ددان (ddan, “tooth”), Northern Kurdish didan, diran (“tooth”), Persian دندان (dandân, “tooth”), Sanskrit दत् (dat), दन्त (danta, “tooth”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ototh
- tooht
- toothh
- tootth
- totoh
- ttooth
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of tooth - 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.
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 September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "tooth", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (6 here; floor ≥5).
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.