bristled
"bristled" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bristled” is uncommon English (frequency #59,926 among 31,241 “B” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #59,926
- frequency rank, English
- 31,241
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past and past participle of bristle
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bristled |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #59,926 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bristled” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
bristled is uncommon English at frequency #59,926 among 31,241 “B” headwords, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "simple past and past participle of bristle".
bristled doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. 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 bristled, ibrustled, iburstled, equivalent to bristle + -ed. The correct English form is bristled, spelled B-R-I-S-T-L-E-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of bristle
Etymology
From Middle English bristled, ibrustled, iburstled, equivalent to bristle + -ed.
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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Using “bristled”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-R-I-S-T-L-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.