alco
"alco" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“alco” is uncommon English (frequency #77,390 among 3,931 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #77,390
- frequency rank, English
- 3,931
- “A” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A small South American dog, domesticated by the natives, now thought to be extinct.
Corpus desk
Index EN-alco · alco · English
alco · rank #77,390 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #77,390
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,931
- PHOTO-FINISH Alcan
Nearest frequency peer: Alcan (-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 “alco”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- aerobatic
aerobatic
22,616 corpus weight
- Alcan
Alcan
22,612 corpus weight
- alco
alco
22,611 corpus weight
- Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh
22,610 corpus weight
- Alessi
Alessi
22,608 corpus weight
- algebraical…
algebraically
22,607 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “alco” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | alco |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #77,390 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “alco” in English
Rare enough to double-check
alco is uncommon English at frequency #77,390 among 3,931 “A” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A small South American dog, domesticated by the natives, now thought to be extinct.".
Zero misspellings are on record for alco in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is alco, spelled A-L-C-O.
Definition
- 1A small South American dog, domesticated by the natives, now thought to be extinct.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how alco appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
1803, John Browne Cutting, “A Succinct History of Jamaica” in Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, pp. lxxviii-lxxix, […] the alco, a mute little dog, caressing and sequacious, once loved and cherished by its poor Indian masters, is like them exterminated.
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.
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "alco", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).