web
/wɛb/
"web" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“web” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,883) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #1,883
- frequency rank, English
- 1,759
- “W” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The silken structure which a spider builds using silk secreted from the spinnerets at the caudal tip of its abdomen; a spiderweb.
Corpus desk
Index EN-web · web · English
web · rank #1,883 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,883
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,759
- PHOTO-FINISH teachers
Nearest frequency peer: teachers (-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 neighbours of confusable “web”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- stated
stated
98,121 corpus weight
- strategy
strategy
98,120 corpus weight
- teachers
teachers
98,119 corpus weight
- web
web
98,118 corpus weight
- wine
wine
98,117 corpus weight
- accounts
accounts
98,116 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “web” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | web |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /wɛb/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,883 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “web”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for web is neighbouring look-alikes ("wi", "Wu", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /wɛb/. Frequency #1,883 among 1,759 “W” headwords. 22 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No generated misspelling entries exist for web in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "wi", "Wu", "wo", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *webʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *webaną Proto-Germanic *wabją Old English webb Middle English web English web From Middle English web, webbe, from Old English webb, from Proto-West Germanic *wabi, from Proto-Germanic *wabją (“we… The correct English form is web, spelled W-E-B.
Definition
- 1The silken structure which a spider builds using silk secreted from the spinnerets at the caudal tip of its abdomen; a spiderweb.
- 2Any interconnected set of persons, places, or things, which, when diagrammed, resembles a spider's web.
- 3The part of a baseball mitt between the forefinger and thumb, the webbing.
- 4A latticed or woven structure.
- 5A tall tale with more complexity than a myth or legend.
- 6A plot or scheme.
- 7The interconnection between flanges in structural members, increasing the effective lever arm and so the load capacity of the member.
- 8The thinner vertical section of a railway rail between the top (head) and bottom (foot) of the rail.
- 9A fold of tissue connecting the toes of certain birds, or of other animals.
- 10The series of barbs implanted on each side of the shaft of a feather, whether stiff and united together by barbules, as in ordinary feathers, or soft and separate, as in downy feathers.
- 11A continuous strip of material carried by rollers during processing.
- 12A long sheet of paper which is fed from a roll into a printing press, as opposed to individual sheets of paper.
- 13A seventeenth-century unit of Rhenish glass containing 60 bunches.
- 14A band of webbing used to regulate the extension of the hood of a carriage.
- 15A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 16A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 17A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 18A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 19A thin metal sheet, plate, or strip, as of lead.
- 20A major broadcasting network.
- 21A section of a groin vault, separated by ribs.
- 22A cataract of the eye.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how web appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The sunlight glistened in the dew on the web.
The time of his birth, his birth-place, his parentage, are all involved in obscurity; and such has been the perplexing ingenuity of commentators, that it is difficult to extricate the truth from the web of conjectures with which it is interwoven.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *webʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *webaną Proto-Germanic *wabją Old English webb Middle English web English web From Middle English web, webbe, from Old English webb, from Proto-West Germanic *wabi, from Proto-Germanic *wabją (“web”), from Proto-Germanic *webaną (“to weave”), from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”). Cognates Cognate with Scots wab (“web”), North Frisian wääb (“web”), Saterland Frisian Wäb (“web”), West Frisian and Dutch web (“web”), Danish væv (“web”), Faroese vevur (“web”), Icelandic vefur (“web”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk vev (“web”), Swedish väv (“web”); also Cornish goghi (“wasps”), Irish foich, foiche, puch (“wasp”), Welsh gwchi (“drone”), Latin vespa (“wasp”), Ancient Greek ὑφή (huphḗ, “web”), ὑφαίνω (huphaínō, “to weave”) (whence Greek ανυφαίνω (anyfaíno), υφαίνω (yfaíno, “to weave”)), Albanian vej (“to weave”), Latvian lapsene (“wasp”), Lithuanian vapsvà (“wasp”), Old Prussian wobse (“wasp”), Belarusian аса́ (asá, “wasp”), Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, and Ukrainian оса́ (osá, “wasp”), Czech vosa (“wasp”), Polish, Slovak, and Slovene osa (“wasp”), Serbo-Croatian о̀са, òsa (“wasp”), Armenian մոզ (moz, “a kind of fly that bites horses and cattle”), Northern Kurdish moz (“hornet; wasp”), Persian بافتن (bâftan, “to weave”), Tocharian A wäp- (“to weave”), Tocharian B wāp- (“to weave”), Sanskrit उभ्नाति (ubhnāti, “to hurt, kill; to cover; fill”).
This word in other languages
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "web", not the corpus desk frequency band.