cautious
/ˈkɔːʃəs/
"cautious" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cautious” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #9,717 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #9,717
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 3
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Using or exercising caution; careful; tentative
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 | cautious |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈkɔːʃəs/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #9,717 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cautious” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cautious is 8 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkɔːʃəs/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,717 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Using or exercising caution; careful; tentative".
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for cautious, with forms such as "acutious", "catuious", and "cauitous". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "curious", "cautiously", "caution", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From caution (“from Latin cautus”) + -ous. The correct English form is cautious, spelled C-A-U-T-I-O-U-S.
Definition
- 1Using or exercising caution; careful; tentative
Etymology
From caution (“from Latin cautus”) + -ous.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acutious,catuious,cauitous,cautiosu,cautiouss,cautiuos,cautoius,cauttious,ccautious,cuatious
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of cautious - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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
How do you spell "cautious"?
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Using “cautious”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-A-U-T-I-O-U-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈkɔːʃəs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “curious” - see the side-by-side comparison. cautious vs curious
- 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.