brittle
/ˈbɹɪtl̩/
"brittle" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“brittle” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #20,054 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #20,054
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 6
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | brittle |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈbɹɪtl̩/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #20,054 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “brittle” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for brittle is 7 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbɹɪtl̩/. Corpus data places it at rank #20,054 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for brittle, with forms such as "bbrittle", "birttle", and "britle". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 6 confusable-pair relationships, "Britt", "battle", "bottle", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English britel, brutel, brotel (“brittle”), from Old English *brytel, *bryttol (“brittle, fragile”, literally “prone to or tending to break”); equivalent to brit + -le. The correct English form is brittle, spelled B-R-I-T-T-L-E.
Definition
- 1Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.
- 2Not physically tough or tenacious; apt to break or crumble when bending.
- 3Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.
- 4Emotionally fragile, easily offended.
- 5Poorly error- or fault-tolerant; having little in the way of redundancy or defense in depth; susceptible to catastrophic failure in the event of a relatively-minor malfunction or deviance.
- 6Characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.
Etymology
From Middle English britel, brutel, brotel (“brittle”), from Old English *brytel, *bryttol (“brittle, fragile”, literally “prone to or tending to break”); equivalent to brit + -le.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbrittle,birttle,britle,britlte,brittel,brittlle,brrittle,brtitle,rbittle
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of brittle - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “brittle”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-R-I-T-T-L-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈbɹɪtl̩/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Britt” - see the side-by-side comparison. brittle vs Britt
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.