back matter
"back-matter" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“back matter” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The parts of a book that appear after the main portion of the body text.
Corpus desk
Index EN-back-matter · back matter · English
back matter · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | back matter |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “back matter” in English
Rare enough to double-check
back matter is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The parts of a book that appear after the main portion of the body text.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for back matter, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 back matter, spelled B-A-C-K- -M-A-T-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1The parts of a book that appear after the main portion of the body text.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how back matter appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Meronyms: afterword, epilogue, outro, postscript; addendum, appendix, errata, glossary, supplement; index; bibliography; endnotes; author, colophon, postface
Synonyms
Antonyms
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.