civil servant

noun

"civil-servant" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“civil servant” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A person employed in the civil service; a government employee.

Key facts for civil servant
PropertyValue
Headwordcivil servant
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “civil servant” sits in English frequency

civil servant falls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

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

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for civil servant is 13 letters long, classified as a noun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A person employed in the civil service; a government employee.".

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for civil servant, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 civil servant, spelled C-I-V-I-L- -S-E-R-V-A-N-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    A person employed in the civil service; a government employee.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "civil servant"?
"civil servant" is spelled C-I-V-I-L- -S-E-R-V-A-N-T.
What does "civil servant" mean?
As a noun, "civil servant" means: A person employed in the civil service; a government employee.
What language does "civil servant" come from?
"civil servant" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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.

Using “civil servant”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct English spelling is C-I-V-I-L- -S-E-R-V-A-N-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list FrequencyWords open word-frequency list