barbed wire
/bɑɹbd waɪəɹ/
"barbed-wire" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“barbed wire” 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) - Twisted strands of steel wire, often coated with zinc, having barbs evenly spaced along them; used to construct agricultural and military fences.
Corpus desk
Index EN-barbed-wire · barbed wire · English
barbed wire · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | barbed wire |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɑɹbd waɪəɹ/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “barbed wire” in English
Rare enough to double-check
barbed wire is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /bɑɹbd waɪəɹ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Twisted strands of steel wire, often coated with zinc, having barbs evenly spaced along them; used to construct agricultural and military fences.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for barbed wire, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is barbed wire, spelled B-A-R-B-E-D- -W-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1Twisted strands of steel wire, often coated with zinc, having barbs evenly spaced along them; used to construct agricultural and military fences.
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.