welcome
/ˈwɛl.kəm/
"welcome" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“welcome” has 10 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #1,113. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #1,113
- frequency rank, English
- 1,759
- “W” headwords
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Whose arrival is a cause of joy; received with gladness; admitted willingly to the house, entertainment, or company.
Corpus desk
Index EN-welcome · welcome · English
welcome · rank #1,113 · 10 variants · 1 confusable
- FREQ-COMMON #1,113
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-LOW 1 pairs
- VAR-MID 10 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,759
- PHOTO-FINISH tour
Nearest frequency peer: tour (-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 “welcome”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- sale
sale
98,891 corpus weight
- throughout
throughout
98,890 corpus weight
- tour
tour
98,889 corpus weight
- welcome
welcome
98,888 corpus weight
- absolutely
absolutely
98,887 corpus weight
- additional
additional
98,886 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “welcome” 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 | welcome |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈwɛl.kəm/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,113 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “welcome” sits in English frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 10 spelling variants around welcome (IPA /ˈwɛl.kəm/), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #1,113 among 1,759 “W” headwords. Wiktionary lists 3 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for welcome, with forms such as "ewlcome", "weclome", and "welccome". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "welcomed", 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 welcome, wolcume, wulcume, wilcume, from Old English wilcuma (“a wished-for guest”; compare also wilcume (“welcome!”, interjection)), from Proto-West Germanic *willjakwemō, from Proto-Germanic *wiljakwemô (“a wished-for arrival or guest”… The correct English form is welcome, spelled W-E-L-C-O-M-E.
Definition
- 1Whose arrival is a cause of joy; received with gladness; admitted willingly to the house, entertainment, or company.
- 2Producing gladness.
- 3Followed by to: free to have or enjoy gratuitously.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how welcome appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
a welcome visitor
Refugees are welcome in our city!
Etymology
From Middle English welcome, wolcume, wulcume, wilcume, from Old English wilcuma (“a wished-for guest”; compare also wilcume (“welcome!”, interjection)), from Proto-West Germanic *willjakwemō, from Proto-Germanic *wiljakwemô (“a wished-for arrival or guest”), possibly from *wiljakwemaną (“to be welcome”), equivalent to will (“desire”) + come (“comer, arrival”). The component wil- was replaced by wel- when the sense “guest” of the second component was no longer understood, likely under influence from the adverb well. Cognates Cognate with Scots walcome, Yola welcome, welkome, North Frisian welkimen, Saterland Frisian wilkemen, wäilkeemen, wülkemen, West Frisian wolkom, Alemannic German wol chomne, wolgcheemen, woul chemne, wéllkòmm, Cimbrian bóolkhèmm, Dutch welkom (earlier willecome), German willkommen, German Low German willkamen, Limburgish welkom, wéllekemm, Luxembourgish wëllkomm, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål velkommen, Elfdalian welkumin, Faroese vælkomin, Icelandic velkominn, Norwegian Nynorsk velkomen, Swedish välkommen, and Old French wilecome (whence Middle French willecomme (“welcome”)), from Germanic. The verb is from Middle English welcomen, wolcumen, wilcumen, from Old English wellcumian, wylcumian, wilcumian (“to welcome, receive gladly”). Similar constructions are found in Modern Greek καλώς ορίσατε (kalós orísate), South Slavic languages, such as Bulgarian добре́ дошъ́л (dobré došǎ́l), Serbo-Croatian dobrodošao, and also in Romance languages, such as Italian benvenuto, Spanish bienvenido, French bienvenu, Catalan benvingut, Portuguese bem-vindo and Romanian bun venit, meaning “[may you have fared] well [in] coming [here]”. These Romance terms do not derive from a Classical Latin root, as no similar construction in Latin is found to exist, but are instead presumed (considering the ruling elite of the Germanic kingdoms which succeeded the Western Roman Empire) to be the result of a calque from a Germanic language into Proto-Romance (Vulgar Latin; see Latin *bene venūtus, and compare perdōnō and compāniō for similar historical calques).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ewlcome
- weclome
- welccome
- welcmoe
- welcoem
- welcomme
- wellcome
- welocme
- wlecome
- wwelcome
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of welcome - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 "welcome", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (10 here; floor ≥5).
What to do next
You've looked up "welcome". Here's where to go from here.
- This headword has one recorded confusable pair with "welcomed". View pair
- 10 edit-distance misspelling variants are generated for spell-check research on this headword. See variants
- Usage frequency rank #1,113 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more English words in the "W" letter cohort. W–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.