foundering
"foundering" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“foundering” is uncommon English (frequency #89,373 among 2,507 “F” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #89,373
- frequency rank, English
- 2,507
- “F” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The act by which a vessel founders.
Corpus desk
Index EN-foundering · foundering · English
foundering · rank #89,373 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #89,373
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,507
- PHOTO-FINISH flytrap
Nearest frequency peer: flytrap (-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 “foundering”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Flossie
Flossie
10,634 corpus weight
- flytrap
flytrap
10,631 corpus weight
- foundering
foundering
10,628 corpus weight
- FQ
FQ
10,625 corpus weight
- freeloader
freeloader
10,624 corpus weight
- freighted
freighted
10,623 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “foundering” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | foundering |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #89,373 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “foundering” in English
Rare enough to double-check
foundering is uncommon English at frequency #89,373 among 2,507 “F” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The act by which a vessel founders.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for foundering, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is foundering, spelled F-O-U-N-D-E-R-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The act by which a vessel founders.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how foundering appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It's the nature of founderings that ships have buoyancy and are afloat one second, then lose buoyancy and sink the next.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "foundering", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).