typhoon
/taɪˈfuːn/
"typhoon" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“typhoon” has 11 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #13,261. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #13,261
- frequency rank, English
- 27,828
- “T” headwords
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A severe tropical cyclone; an intense, rotating storm.
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 | typhoon |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /taɪˈfuːn/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #13,261 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “typhoon” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 11 spelling variants around typhoon (IPA /taɪˈfuːn/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #13,261 among 27,828 “T” headwords. Wiktionary lists 2 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for typhoon, with forms such as "tpyhoon", "ttyphoon", and "tyhpoon". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "tycoon", "typhoid", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: English texts mention typhon, tiphon as a Greek word for "whirlwind" since at least the 1550s, referring to Ancient Greek τυφῶν (tuphôn), τυφώς (tuphṓs, “whirlwind”) (the latter attested since Aeschylus), Τυφῶν (Tuphôn, “Typhon, father of the winds”). (Fren… The correct English form is typhoon, spelled T-Y-P-H-O-O-N.
Definition
- 1A severe tropical cyclone; an intense, rotating storm.
- 2A weather phenomenon in the northwestern Pacific that is precisely equivalent to a hurricane except for its geographical region, typically resulting in wind speeds of 64 knots (119 km/h) or above. Equivalent to a cyclone in the Indian Ocean and Indonesia and Australia.
Etymology
English texts mention typhon, tiphon as a Greek word for "whirlwind" since at least the 1550s, referring to Ancient Greek τυφῶν (tuphôn), τυφώς (tuphṓs, “whirlwind”) (the latter attested since Aeschylus), Τυφῶν (Tuphôn, “Typhon, father of the winds”). (French typhon (“whirlwind”) is said to be attested since 1504.) However, the first use of it as an English word for a whirlwind or storm dates to 1588, in the spelling Touffon, in the specific sense "giant storm in the Pacific"; this sense first appears in Europe in the mid 16th century in Portuguese tufão (attested since at least 1560), whence it entered English. Portuguese sailors likely got the word from Arabic طُوفَان (ṭūfān) (compare Persian طوفان (tufân), Hindi तूफ़ान (tūfān)), and some spellings of the English word (like tufan) seem to derive from that Arabic word. The Arabic word's origin is sometimes thought to be Sinitic 大風／大风 ("big wind", Mandarin dàfēng, Cantonese daai6 fung1 /taːi̯²² fʊŋ⁵⁵/, Hakka thai-fûng /tʰai̯⁵⁵ fuŋ²⁴/), and some English forms like tyfoong, tyfung are from or were modified based on Chinese. However, the Arabic word may be entirely Semitic from the native root ط و ف (ṭ w f) in the sense of the wind circling around, or it might derive from Greek. (Some sources even suggest the term originated in Greek and travelled via Arabic to Chinese before making its way back into Arabic and back to Europe.) Over time, the spelling of the word in English was influenced by the Greek word.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: tpyhoon,ttyphoon,tyhpoon,typhhoon,typhon,typhono,typhoonn,typohon,typphoon,tyyphoon,ytphoon
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of typhoon - 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 “typhoon”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-Y-P-H-O-O-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /taɪˈfuːn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “tycoon” - see the side-by-side comparison. typhoon vs tycoon
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Same frequency band
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.