acrostic
/əˈkɹɒstɪk/
"acrostic" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“acrostic” is uncommon English (frequency #83,947 among 35,202 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #83,947
- frequency rank, English
- 35,202
- “A” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | acrostic |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /əˈkɹɒstɪk/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #83,947 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “acrostic” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
acrostic is uncommon English at frequency #83,947 among 35,202 “A” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /əˈkɹɒstɪk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for acrostic in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Middle French acrostiche, acrostique (“acrostic”) (modern French acrostiche), and its etymon Late Latin acrostichis, from Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), from ἄκρο- (ákro-, prefix indicating, among other things, the extremity or tip of… The correct English form is acrostic, spelled A-C-R-O-S-T-I-C.
Definition
- 1A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.
- 2A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.
- 3A kind of word puzzle, whose solution forms an anagram of a quotation, with its initial letters often forming the name of the person quoted.
- 4A kind of word puzzle in which a series of words are clued, and individual letters from the clued word spell out one or more additional words.
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French acrostiche, acrostique (“acrostic”) (modern French acrostiche), and its etymon Late Latin acrostichis, from Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), from ἄκρο- (ákro-, prefix indicating, among other things, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos, “row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to climb, go”)).
This word in other languages
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 “acrostic”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-C-R-O-S-T-I-C - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /əˈkɹɒstɪk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.