encaustic
"encaustic" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“encaustic” is uncommon English (frequency #96,991 among 18,836 “E” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #96,991
- frequency rank, English
- 18,836
- “E” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Prepared by means of heat; burned in.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | encaustic |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #96,991 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “encaustic” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
encaustic is uncommon English at frequency #96,991 among 18,836 “E” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Prepared by means of heat; burned in.".
encaustic doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Ancient Greek ἐγκαυστικός (enkaustikós, “burning in”), from καίω (kaíō, “to burn”). The correct English form is encaustic, spelled E-N-C-A-U-S-T-I-C.
Definition
- 1Prepared by means of heat; burned in.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ἐγκαυστικός (enkaustikós, “burning in”), from καίω (kaíō, “to burn”).
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 “encaustic”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is E-N-C-A-U-S-T-I-C - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.