touch
/tʌt͡ʃ/
"touch" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“touch” has 7 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #1,324. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #1,324
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Primarily physical senses.
Corpus desk
Index EN-touch · touch · English
touch · rank #1,324 · 7 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,324
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 7 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH thus
Nearest frequency peer: thus (-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 “touch”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- supposed
supposed
98,680 corpus weight
- sweet
sweet
98,679 corpus weight
- thus
thus
98,678 corpus weight
- touch
touch
98,677 corpus weight
- yesterday
yesterday
98,676 corpus weight
- caught
caught
98,675 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “touch” 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 | touch |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /tʌt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,324 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “touch” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 7 spelling variants around touch (IPA /tʌt͡ʃ/), averb. Corpus frequency is #1,324 among 3,151 “T” headwords. Wiktionary lists 35 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for touch, with forms such as "otuch", "tocuh", and "toucch". 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, "TUC", "tour", "tuck", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English touchen, tochen, from Old French tochier (“to touch”) (whence Modern French toucher; compare French doublet toquer (“to offend, bother, harass”)), from Vulgar Latin *tuccō (“to knock, strike, offend”), from Frankish *tukkōn (“to knock, s… The correct English form is touch, spelled T-O-U-C-H.
Definition
- 1Primarily physical senses.
- 2Primarily physical senses.
- 3Primarily physical senses.
- 4Primarily physical senses.
- 5Primarily physical senses.
- 6Primarily physical senses.
- 7Primarily physical senses.
- 8Primarily physical senses.
- 9Primarily physical senses.
- 10Primarily physical senses.
- 11Primarily physical senses.
- 12Primarily physical senses.
- 13Primarily physical senses.
- 14Primarily physical senses.
- 15Primarily physical senses.
- 16Primarily physical senses.
- 17Primarily physical senses.
- 18Primarily non-physical senses.
- 19Primarily non-physical senses.
- 20Primarily non-physical senses.
- 21Primarily non-physical senses.
- 22Primarily non-physical senses.
- 23Primarily non-physical senses.
- 24Primarily non-physical senses.
- 25Primarily non-physical senses.
- 26Primarily non-physical senses.
- 27Primarily non-physical senses.
- 28Primarily non-physical senses.
- 29Primarily non-physical senses.
- 30To try; to prove, as with a touchstone.
- 31To mark or delineate with touches; to add a slight stroke to with the pencil or brush.
- 32To infect; to affect slightly.
- 33To strike; to manipulate; to play on.
- 34To perform, as a tune; to play.
- 35To influence by impulse; to impel forcibly.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how touch appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I touched his face softly.
While thus she spake, / She toucht his eye-lashes with libant lip / And breath'd ambrosial odours; […]
Etymology
From Middle English touchen, tochen, from Old French tochier (“to touch”) (whence Modern French toucher; compare French doublet toquer (“to offend, bother, harass”)), from Vulgar Latin *tuccō (“to knock, strike, offend”), from Frankish *tukkōn (“to knock, strike, touch”), from Proto-Germanic *tukkōną (“to tug, grab, grasp”), from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to draw, pull, lead”). Largely displaced native Middle English rinen, from Old English hrīnan (whence Modern English rine). Doublet of tuck. Cognates Cognate with Old High German zochhōn, zuhhōn (“to grasp, take, seize, snatch”) (whence German zucken (“to jerk, flinch”)), German Low German tucken, tocken (“to fidget, twitch, pull up, entice, throb, knock, repeatedly tap”), Middle Dutch tocken, tucken (“to touch, entice”) (whence Dutch tokkelen (“to strum, pluck”)), Old English tucian, tūcian (“to disturb, mistreat”) (whence Modern English tuck). Compare also Old High German tokkōn, tockōn (“to abut, collide”). Outside Germanic, cognate to Albanian cek (“to touch”), Old Church Slavonic тъкнѫти (tŭknǫti). More at tuck, take.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- otuch
- tocuh
- toucch
- touchh
- touhc
- ttouch
- tuoch
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of touch - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 3, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "touch"?
What does "touch" mean?
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "touch", 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 (7 here; floor ≥5).
What to do next
You've looked up "touch". Here's where to go from here.
- "touch" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "TUC". View pair
- 7 edit-distance misspelling variants are generated for spell-check research on this headword. See variants
- Usage frequency rank #1,324 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more English words in the "T" letter cohort. T–Z browse
- PlainSpell rotates a curated Word of the Day from the English corpus, a passive way to discover vocabulary. Word of the Day
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.