colourful
"colourful" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“colourful” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #13,886 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #13,886
- frequency rank, English
- 9
- letters
- 13
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - British standard spelling of colorful.
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 | colourful |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #13,886 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “colourful” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for colourful is 9 letters long, classified as an adjective. Corpus data places it at rank #13,886 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "British standard spelling of colorful.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 13 likely wrong-spelling variants for colourful, with forms such as "ccolourful", "cloourful", and "collourful". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "colorful", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From colour + -ful. The correct English form is colourful, spelled C-O-L-O-U-R-F-U-L.
Definition
- 1British standard spelling of colorful.
Etymology
From colour + -ful.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccolourful,cloourful,collourful,coloruful,coloufrul,colourfful,colourflu,colourfull,colourrful,colourufl,coluorful,coolurful,oclourful
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of colourful - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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
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Using “colourful”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-O-L-O-U-R-F-U-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “colorful” - see the side-by-side comparison. colourful vs colorful
- 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.