dispiriting
/dɪˈspɪɹɪtɪŋ/
"dispiriting" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“dispiriting” is an uncommon English word, ranked #94,780 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #94,780
- frequency rank, English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Lowering the morale of; making despondent or depressive; disheartening.
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See how dispiriting compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dispiriting |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /dɪˈspɪɹɪtɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #94,780 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “dispiriting” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dispiriting is 11 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɪˈspɪɹɪtɪŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #94,780 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Lowering the morale of; making despondent or depressive; disheartening.".
No misspelling variants are generated for dispiriting in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is dispiriting, spelled D-I-S-P-I-R-I-T-I-N-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Lowering the morale of; making despondent or depressive; disheartening.
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “dispiriting, English word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/en/word/dispiriting
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Using “dispiriting”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-I-S-P-I-R-I-T-I-N-G - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /dɪˈspɪɹɪtɪŋ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: