city state
"city-state" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“city state” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A sovereign city, as in Ancient Greece, often part of a league of such cities.
Corpus desk
Index EN-city-state · city state · English
city state · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | city state |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “city state” in English
Rare enough to double-check
city state is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A sovereign city, as in Ancient Greece, often part of a league of such cities.".
No misspelling variants are generated for city state in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From city + state, a calque of German Stadtstaat. The correct English form is city state, spelled C-I-T-Y- -S-T-A-T-E.
Definition
- 1A sovereign city, as in Ancient Greece, often part of a league of such cities.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how city state appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Singapore is the world's most populous city state and the only island city-state in the world.
The Vatican City State, a sovereign city-state governed by Holy See, has a large number of embassies across the world.
Etymology
From city + state, a calque of German Stadtstaat.
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.