zhu
"zhu" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“zhu” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #24,964 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #24,964
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An ancient Chinese unit of weight, notionally equivalent to 100 millet seeds or 1/24 of the liang/tael/Chinese ounce, chiefly used in denominating small coins in ancient and early imperial China.
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 | zhu |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #24,964 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “zhu” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for zhu is 3 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #24,964 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "An ancient Chinese unit of weight, notionally equivalent to 100 millet seeds or 1/24 of the liang/tael/Chinese ounce, chiefly used in denominating small coins in ancient and early imperial China.".
No misspelling variants are generated for zhu in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Zo", "zoo", "zip", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The atonal Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin 銖 /铢 (zhū). The correct English form is zhu, spelled Z-H-U.
Definition
- 1An ancient Chinese unit of weight, notionally equivalent to 100 millet seeds or 1/24 of the liang/tael/Chinese ounce, chiefly used in denominating small coins in ancient and early imperial China.
Etymology
The atonal Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin 銖 /铢 (zhū).
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 “zhu”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is Z-H-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “Zo” - see the side-by-side comparison. zhu vs Zo
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.