adoptee

noun

"adoptee" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“adoptee” is uncommon English (frequency #79,231 among 3,931 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#79,231
frequency rank, English
3,931
“A” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An adopted son or daughter.

Corpus desk

Index EN-adoptee · adoptee · English

adoptee · rank #79,231 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #79,231
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 3,931
  • PHOTO-FINISH achingly

Nearest frequency peer: achingly (-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 “adoptee”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “adoptee” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for adoptee
PropertyValue
Headwordadoptee
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters7
Frequency rank#79,231
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “adoptee” in English

Word frequency stretches from the small set of words we reach for constantly (left) out to the long tail barely used once in a while (right).adopteefalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Ticks step logarithmically, so each one marks a roughly tenfold drop in how often the word turns up. Rare peers in the same band: “achingly” (#79,230), “affronted” (#79,232), “Abbasid” (#79,228). Among 3,931 “A” headwords, “adoptee” is #79,231. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

adoptee is uncommon English at frequency #79,231 among 3,931 “A” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

No generated misspelling entries exist for adoptee 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 nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

Etymologically, the entry records: Learned borrowing from French adoptée, feminine past participle of adopter meaning "to adopt", equivalent to adopt + -ee. The correct English form is adoptee, spelled A-D-O-P-T-E-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    An adopted son or daughter.
  2. 2
    A person who was adopted as a child.
  3. 3
    Synonym of adopter.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how adoptee appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. An adult Chinese female adoptee has found her biological parents.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from French adoptée, feminine past participle of adopter meaning "to adopt", equivalent to adopt + -ee.

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

How do you spell "adoptee"?
"adoptee" is spelled A-D-O-P-T-E-E.
What does "adoptee" mean?
As a noun, "adoptee" means: An adopted son or daughter.
What is the origin of the word "adoptee"?
Learned borrowing from French adoptée, feminine past participle of adopter meaning "to adopt", equivalent to adopt + -ee. See the full etymology section above for more details.
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.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "adoptee", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list