wilk
/ˈwɪlk/
"wilk" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“wilk” is uncommon English (frequency #71,223 among 1,759 “W” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #71,223
- frequency rank, English
- 1,759
- “W” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Obsolete form of whelk.
Corpus desk
Index EN-wilk · wilk · English
wilk · rank #71,223 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #71,223
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,759
- PHOTO-FINISH Wigglesworth
Nearest frequency peer: Wigglesworth (-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.
Long-tail ranks near “wilk”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- whois
whois
28,782 corpus weight
- whorehouse
whorehouse
28,781 corpus weight
- Wigglesworth
Wigglesworth
28,779 corpus weight
- wilk
wilk
28,778 corpus weight
- Wilmslow
Wilmslow
28,777 corpus weight
- Wisniewski
Wisniewski
28,776 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “wilk” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | wilk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwɪlk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #71,223 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “wilk” in English
Rare enough to double-check
wilk is uncommon English at frequency #71,223 among 1,759 “W” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈwɪlk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Obsolete form of whelk.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for wilk, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is wilk, spelled W-I-L-K.
Definition
- 1Obsolete form of whelk.
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 "wilk", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).