drily
"drily" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“drily” is uncommon English (frequency #98,043 among 3,470 “D” headwords), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #98,043
- frequency rank, English
- 3,470
- “D” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Alternative spelling of dryly.
Corpus desk
Index EN-drily · drily · English
drily · rank #98,043 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #98,043
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,470
- PHOTO-FINISH downshift
Nearest frequency peer: downshift (-3 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.
Long-tail ranks near “drily”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- divo
divo
1,966 corpus weight
- downregulat…
downregulation
1,962 corpus weight
- downshift
downshift
1,961 corpus weight
- drily
drily
1,958 corpus weight
- Dupin
Dupin
1,953 corpus weight
- dynamometer
dynamometer
1,951 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “drily” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | drily |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #98,043 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “drily” in English
Rare enough to double-check
drily is uncommon English at frequency #98,043 among 3,470 “D” headwords, classed as anadverb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Alternative spelling of dryly.".
No misspelling variants are generated for drily in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is drily, spelled D-R-I-L-Y.
Definition
- 1Alternative spelling of dryly.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how drily appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
“Anybody been here, Sammy?” asked Mr. Weller senior, drily, after a long silence.
Füssli […] gives an account of the painter which is largely occupied with a consideration of his masterpiece, the ‘Battle of Waterloo.’ He comments upon the prominence given to Wellington in the picture, and rather drily remarks […] that the rearward position assigned Blücher is not an ungraceful tribute to Germany ! the intention undoubtedly being ‘der d…
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.
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "drily", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).