cathetus
/ˈkæ.θɪ.təs/
"cathetus" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cathetus” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A line perpendicular to a surface (or line); in particular, either of the sides of a right triangle other than its hypotenuse.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cathetus · cathetus · English
cathetus · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 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 | cathetus |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkæ.θɪ.təs/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “cathetus” in English
Rare enough to double-check
cathetus is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈkæ.θɪ.təs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A line perpendicular to a surface (or line); in particular, either of the sides of a right triangle other than its hypotenuse.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for cathetus, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin cathetus, from Ancient Greek κάθετος (káthetos, “perpendicular”). The correct English form is cathetus, spelled C-A-T-H-E-T-U-S.
Definition
- 1A line perpendicular to a surface (or line); in particular, either of the sides of a right triangle other than its hypotenuse.
Etymology
From Latin cathetus, from Ancient Greek κάθετος (káthetos, “perpendicular”).
Synonyms
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.