tort
/tɔːt/
"tort" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tort” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #25,620 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #25,620
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A wrongful act, whether intentional or negligent, regarded as non-criminal and unrelated to a contract, which causes an injury and can be remedied in civil court, usually through the awarding of da...
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 | tort |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tɔːt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #25,620 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tort” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for tort is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tɔːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #25,620 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for tort, with forms such as "otrt", "torrt", and "tortt". 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, "TT", "try", "toy", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English tort (“(uncountable) wrong; (countable) an injury, a wrong”), from Old French tort (“misdeed, wrong”) (modern French tort (“an error, wrong; a fault”)), from Medieval Latin tortum (“injustice, wrong”), a noun use of a neuter singular par… The correct English form is tort, spelled T-O-R-T.
Definition
- 1A wrongful act, whether intentional or negligent, regarded as non-criminal and unrelated to a contract, which causes an injury and can be remedied in civil court, usually through the awarding of damages.
- 2An injury or wrong.
Etymology
From Middle English tort (“(uncountable) wrong; (countable) an injury, a wrong”), from Old French tort (“misdeed, wrong”) (modern French tort (“an error, wrong; a fault”)), from Medieval Latin tortum (“injustice, wrong”), a noun use of a neuter singular participle form of Latin tortus (“crooked; twisted”), the perfect passive participle of torqueō (“to bend or twist awry, distort”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (“to spin; to turn”). Cognates * Galician torto (“(adjective) bent; crooked; twisted; (noun, archaic) harm, offence; injustice, wrong, tort”) * Italian torto (“(adjective) bent; crooked; twisted; (noun, archaic) injustice, wrong”) * Norwegian Bokmål tort (dated, now only in fixed expressions) * Norwegian Nynorsk tort (dated, now only in fixed expressions) * Occitan tort * Old French tort (modern French tort) * Portuguese torto (“(adjective) bent; crooked; twisted; (noun, archaic) harm, offence; injustice, wrong”) * Spanish tuerto (“injury, offence”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: otrt,torrt,tortt,totr,ttort
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of tort - 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
How do you spell "tort"?
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Using “tort”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-O-R-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /tɔːt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “TT” - see the side-by-side comparison. tort vs TT
- 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.