boatswain
/ˈbəʊ.sən/
"boatswain" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“boatswain” is uncommon English (frequency #73,006 among 4,121 “B” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #73,006
- frequency rank, English
- 4,121
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A person aboard ship who is in charge of various maritime affairs.
Corpus desk
Index EN-boatswain · boatswain · English
boatswain · rank #73,006 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #73,006
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,121
- PHOTO-FINISH Blyton
Nearest frequency peer: Blyton (-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 “boatswain”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- blowup
blowup
26,998 corpus weight
- bluer
bluer
26,997 corpus weight
- Blyton
Blyton
26,996 corpus weight
- boatswain
boatswain
26,995 corpus weight
- Bodrum
Bodrum
26,994 corpus weight
- bollard
bollard
26,991 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “boatswain” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | boatswain |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈbəʊ.sən/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #73,006 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “boatswain” in English
Rare enough to double-check
boatswain is uncommon English at frequency #73,006 among 4,121 “B” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈbəʊ.sən/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for boatswain in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English botswain, botswein, bote-swayn, from late Old English bātsweġen, from bāt (“boat”) + sweġen (“swain”), the latter element a borrowing from Old Norse sveinn (“boy”); equivalent to boat + swain (“boy, servant”). The correct English form is boatswain, spelled B-O-A-T-S-W-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1A person aboard ship who is in charge of various maritime affairs.
- 2A person aboard ship who is in charge of various maritime affairs.
- 3A kind of gull, the jaeger.
- 4The tropicbird.
Etymology
From Middle English botswain, botswein, bote-swayn, from late Old English bātsweġen, from bāt (“boat”) + sweġen (“swain”), the latter element a borrowing from Old Norse sveinn (“boy”); equivalent to boat + swain (“boy, servant”).
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); 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 "boatswain", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).