diacritic
/ˌdaɪəˈkɹɪtɪk/
"diacritic" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“diacritic” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Distinguishing.
Corpus desk
Index EN-diacritic · diacritic · English
diacritic · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "D" 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 | diacritic |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˌdaɪəˈkɹɪtɪk/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “diacritic” in English
Rare enough to double-check
diacritic is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed /ˌdaɪəˈkɹɪtɪk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for diacritic, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek διακριτικός (diakritikós, “distinguishing, separative”), from διακρῑ́νω (diakrī́nō, “to distinguish, separate”), from δια- (dia-, “between”) + κρῑ́νω (krī́nō, “I separate, distinguish”). The correct English form is diacritic, spelled D-I-A-C-R-I-T-I-C.
Definition
- 1Distinguishing.
- 2Denoting a distinguishing mark applied to a letter or character.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek διακριτικός (diakritikós, “distinguishing, separative”), from διακρῑ́νω (diakrī́nō, “to distinguish, separate”), from δια- (dia-, “between”) + κρῑ́νω (krī́nō, “I separate, distinguish”).
Synonyms
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.