chain reaction
"chain-reaction" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“chain reaction” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A chemical reaction where the products of the reaction influence the reactants of a following reaction, leading to positive feedback.
Corpus desk
Index EN-chain-reaction · chain reaction · English
chain reaction · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-6 6 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 | chain reaction |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “chain reaction” in English
Rare enough to double-check
chain reaction is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for chain reaction, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is chain reaction, spelled C-H-A-I-N- -R-E-A-C-T-I-O-N.
Definition
- 1A chemical reaction where the products of the reaction influence the reactants of a following reaction, leading to positive feedback.
- 2A nuclear reaction in which particles produced by the fission of one atom trigger fissions of other atoms.
- 3A series of events, each one causing or influencing the next.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how chain reaction appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
polymerase chain reaction
The Manhattan Project produced the first recorded controlled chain reaction.
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.