acquired
/əˈkwaɪɹd/
"acquired" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“acquired” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,595 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #3,595
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past and past participle of acquire
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 | acquired |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /əˈkwaɪɹd/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #3,595 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “acquired” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for acquired is 8 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈkwaɪɹd/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,595 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "simple past and past participle of acquire".
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for acquired, with forms such as "accquired", "acqiured", and "acqquired". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "acquitted", "acquire", a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is acquired, spelled A-C-Q-U-I-R-E-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of acquire
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: accquired,acqiured,acqquired,acquierd,acquirde,acquiredd,acquirred,acquried,acuqired,aqcuired,caquired
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of acquired - 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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Using “acquired”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-C-Q-U-I-R-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /əˈkwaɪɹd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “acquitted” - see the side-by-side comparison. acquired vs acquitted
- 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.