frameshift
noun, verb
frameshift is a noun meaning “A frameshift mutation” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-R-A-M-E-S-H-I-F-T, and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of frameshift is frameshifts.
What does frameshift mean?
noun
- 1
A frameshift mutation.
verb
- 1
To use a starting point for translating a series of nucleotides that is off by an amount not divisible by three, resulting in an entirely distinct set of codons.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of frameshift
- frameshifts plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- frameshifting participle, present
- frameshifted participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is frameshift?
Frameshift appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 139,999th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does frameshift come from?
From frame + shift.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).