fountainhead
"fountainhead" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fountainhead” is uncommon English (frequency #68,229 among 2,507 “F” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #68,229
- frequency rank, English
- 2,507
- “F” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A spring that is the source of a river.
Corpus desk
Index EN-fountainhead · fountainhead · English
fountainhead · rank #68,229 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #68,229
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,507
- PHOTO-FINISH fount
Nearest frequency peer: fount (-1 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 “fountainhead”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Fok
Fok
31,777 corpus weight
- foll
foll
31,776 corpus weight
- fount
fount
31,773 corpus weight
- fountainhead
fountainhead
31,772 corpus weight
- franchisor
franchisor
31,769 corpus weight
- frappuccino
frappuccino
31,768 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “fountainhead” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| 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) |
Long-tail rank of “fountainhead” in English
Rare enough to double-check
fountainhead is uncommon English at frequency #68,229 among 2,507 “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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "fountainhead", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 12 letters (nearest by frequency rank).