castigation

noun

"castigation" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“castigation” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
11
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Corrective punishment; chastisement; reproof

Corpus desk

Index EN-castigation · castigation · English

castigation · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 11 letters
  • VOW-5 5 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.

Key facts for castigation
PropertyValue
Headwordcastigation
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “castigation” in English

castigationranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

castigation is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for castigation, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is castigation, spelled C-A-S-T-I-G-A-T-I-O-N.

Definition

  1. 1
    Corrective punishment; chastisement; reproof
  2. 2
    Severe criticism.
  3. 3
    Emendation; correction.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how castigation appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. He was seasoned wood, and took the world pretty wisely; not reckless of castigation, as some boys become, nor oversensitive as to dehonour, as his friend and comrade beside him was.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "castigation"?
"castigation" is spelled C-A-S-T-I-G-A-T-I-O-N.
What does "castigation" mean?
As a noun, "castigation" means: Corrective punishment; chastisement; reproof
What language does "castigation" come from?
"castigation" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list