fountainhead
"fountainhead" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fountainhead” is uncommon English (frequency #68,229 among 18,613 “F” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #68,229
- frequency rank, English
- 18,613
- “F” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A spring that is the source of a river.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fountainhead |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #68,229 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “fountainhead” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
fountainhead is uncommon English at frequency #68,229 among 18,613 “F” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for fountainhead in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From fountain + head. The correct English form is fountainhead, spelled F-O-U-N-T-A-I-N-H-E-A-D.
Definition
- 1A spring that is the source of a river.
- 2An abundant source of knowledge, etc.
Etymology
From fountain + head.
This word in other languages
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 “fountainhead”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is F-O-U-N-T-A-I-N-H-E-A-D - 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.