devastating
"devastating" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“devastating” has 17 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #8,920. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #8,920
- frequency rank, English
- 3,470
- “D” headwords
- 17
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Causing devastation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-devastating · devastating · English
devastating · rank #8,920 · 17 variants · 1 confusable
- FREQ-COMMON #8,920
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-LOW 1 pairs
- VAR-HIGH 17 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,470
- PHOTO-FINISH desirable
Nearest frequency peer: desirable (-1 rank slots)
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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “devastating”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- cowboy
cowboy
91,084 corpus weight
- defendants
defendants
91,083 corpus weight
- desirable
desirable
91,082 corpus weight
- devastating
devastating
91,081 corpus weight
- diagram
diagram
91,080 corpus weight
- dismiss
dismiss
91,079 corpus weight
What this shows “devastating” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | devastating |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #8,920 |
| Misspellings tracked | 17 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “devastating”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 17 spelling variants around devastating, anadjective. Corpus frequency is #8,920 among 3,470 “D” headwords. Dominant gloss: "Causing devastation.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 17 likely wrong-spelling variants for devastating, with forms such as "ddevastating", "deavstating", and "devasatting". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "devastation", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is devastating, spelled D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1Causing devastation.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how devastating appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Serious as was the flood damage in England, the bursting of some of the dykes on the coast of Holland resulted in an even more widespread and devastating inundation.
“The whole world has a stake in maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The security of commercial shipping lanes and global supply chains depends on it. And so does freedom of navigation worldwide. Make no mistake: conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be devastating.”
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ddevastating
- deavstating
- devasatting
- devasstating
- devastaitng
- devastatign
- devastatingg
- devastatinng
- devastatnig
- devastatting
- devasttaing
- devasttating
- devatsating
- devsatating
- devvastating
- dveastating
- edvastating
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of devastating - 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 "devastating"?
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "devastating", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 11 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (17 here; floor ≥5).