retroflex

/[ʁetʁoˈflɛks]/ adj

Letters

9 characters

Language

German

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

retroflex is anGermanadj. It means: mit zurückgebogener Zunge gebildet Pronounced [ʁetʁoˈflɛks].

Key facts for retroflex
PropertyValue
Headwordretroflex
LanguageGerman
Part of speechAdj
IPA[ʁetʁoˈflɛks]
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

retroflex is not present in the top-100,000 ranked German corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The German entry for retroflex is 9 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ʁetʁoˈflɛks]. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "mit zurückgebogener Zunge gebildet".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for retroflex in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable German patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct German form is retroflex, spelled R-E-T-R-O-F-L-E-X, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    mit zurückgebogener Zunge gebildet

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "retroflex"?
"retroflex" is spelled R-E-T-R-O-F-L-E-X. The IPA pronunciation is [ʁetʁoˈflɛks].
What does "retroflex" mean?
As an adj, "retroflex" means: mit zurückgebogener Zunge gebildet
How do you pronounce "retroflex"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "retroflex" is [ʁetʁoˈflɛks]. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "retroflex" come from?
"retroflex" is a German word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby German words

Other entries that begin with the letter R in our German index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.