calends
/ˈkæləndz/
"calends" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“calends” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Often with initial capital: the first day of a month.
Corpus desk
Index EN-calends · calends · English
calends · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" 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 | calends |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkæləndz/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “calends” in English
Rare enough to double-check
calends is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈkæləndz/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 6 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for calends, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English calendes, calendas, calendis, kalandes, kalendas, kalendes, kalendez, kalendis, kalendus (also in the singular forms calende, kalend, kalende), from Latin kalendās, accusative plural of kalendae (“first day of a Roman month”), an archaic… The correct English form is calends, spelled C-A-L-E-N-D-S.
Definition
- 1Often with initial capital: the first day of a month.
- 2Often with initial capital: the first day of a month.
- 3A day for settling debts and other accounts.
- 4Synonym of Rosh Hodesh (“the Jewish festival of the new moon, which begins the months of the Hebrew calendar”).
- 5Synonym of calendar; (figurative) an account, a record.
- 6The first day of something; a beginning.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how calends appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The third day before the calends of February is 30 January, the third calends of March is 27 or 28 February, and the third of the calends of May is 29 April.
The Roman Month its ſeveral days divides / By reckoning backwards, Calends, Nones, and Ides.
Etymology
From Middle English calendes, calendas, calendis, kalandes, kalendas, kalendes, kalendez, kalendis, kalendus (also in the singular forms calende, kalend, kalende), from Latin kalendās, accusative plural of kalendae (“first day of a Roman month”), an archaic variant of calandae, from calandus (“which is to be called or announced solemnly”), the future passive participle of calō (“to call, announce solemnly”) (referring to the Roman practice of proclaiming the first days of the lunar month upon seeing the first signs of a new crescent moon), from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₁- (“to call, cry, summon”). Although the singular form calend (now obsolete, rare) appeared in English (and compare Old English calend, kalendus (“calends; a month”)), no singular form was used in Latin as recurring days of the calendar were always referred to in the plural. Sense 2 (“a day for settling debts and other accounts”) refers to the Roman practice of fixing the calends as the day for debts to be paid.
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.