besting
/ˈbɛstɪŋ/
"besting" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“besting” is uncommon English (frequency #68,040 among 4,121 “B” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #68,040
- frequency rank, English
- 4,121
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - present participle and gerund of best
Corpus desk
Index EN-besting · besting · English
besting · rank #68,040 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #68,040
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,121
- PHOTO-FINISH Berner
Nearest frequency peer: Berner (-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 “besting”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Belial
Belial
31,964 corpus weight
- bellicose
bellicose
31,963 corpus weight
- Berner
Berner
31,962 corpus weight
- besting
besting
31,961 corpus weight
- bicameral
bicameral
31,959 corpus weight
- biogeography
biogeography
31,958 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “besting” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | besting |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈbɛstɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #68,040 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “besting” in English
Rare enough to double-check
besting is uncommon English at frequency #68,040 among 4,121 “B” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed /ˈbɛstɪŋ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "present participle and gerund of best".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for besting, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is besting, spelled B-E-S-T-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1present participle and gerund of best
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "besting", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).