arms race
"arms-race" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“arms race” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A competition for military supremacy between two powers, especially for the most weapons and the best military technology.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | arms race |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “arms race” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
arms race is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for arms race, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is arms race, spelled A-R-M-S- -R-A-C-E.
Definition
- 1A competition for military supremacy between two powers, especially for the most weapons and the best military technology.
- 2Any similar competition that involves competing developments.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
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Using “arms race”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-R-M-S- -R-A-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.