failover
"failover" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“failover” is uncommon English (frequency #90,435 among 18,613 “F” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #90,435
- frequency rank, English
- 18,613
- “F” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An automatic switch to a secondary system on failure of the primary system, such as a means for ensuring high availability of some critical resource (such as a computer system), involving a paralle...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | failover |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #90,435 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “failover” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
failover is uncommon English at frequency #90,435 among 18,613 “F” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "An automatic switch to a secondary system on failure of the primary system, such as a means for ensuring high availability of some critical resource (such as a computer system), involving a paralle...".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for failover, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: Deverbal from fail over. The correct English form is failover, spelled F-A-I-L-O-V-E-R.
Definition
- 1An automatic switch to a secondary system on failure of the primary system, such as a means for ensuring high availability of some critical resource (such as a computer system), involving a parallel backup system which is kept running at all times, so that, upon detected failure of the primary system, processing can be automatically shifted over to the backup.
Etymology
Deverbal from fail over.
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 “failover”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is F-A-I-L-O-V-E-R - 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.