awfulness
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
9 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "awfulness", 9-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "awfulness" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "awfulness" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
awfulness is aEnglishnoun. It means: The state or quality of being awful.
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See how awfulness compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | awfulness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #72,960 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for awfulness is 9 letters long, classified as anoun. Corpus data places it at rank #72,960 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for awfulness in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English aghfulnesse, equivalent to awful + -ness. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is awfulness, spelled A-W-F-U-L-N-E-S-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The state or quality of being awful.
- 2The quality of striking with awe, or with reverence
- 3The state of being struck with awe; a spirit of solemnity; profound reverence.
Etymology
From Middle English aghfulnesse, equivalent to awful + -ness.
Frequency rank: #72,960 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: