fraying
/ˈfɹeɪ.ɪŋ/
"fraying" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fraying” is uncommon English (frequency #66,673 among 2,507 “F” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #66,673
- frequency rank, English
- 2,507
- “F” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - present participle and gerund of fray
Corpus desk
Index EN-fraying · fraying · English
fraying · rank #66,673 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #66,673
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,507
- PHOTO-FINISH Franklyn
Nearest frequency peer: Franklyn (-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 “fraying”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- foghorn
foghorn
33,332 corpus weight
- Francia
Francia
33,330 corpus weight
- Franklyn
Franklyn
33,329 corpus weight
- fraying
fraying
33,328 corpus weight
- Freo
Freo
33,327 corpus weight
- frictionless
frictionless
33,326 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “fraying” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fraying |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈfɹeɪ.ɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #66,673 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “fraying” in English
Rare enough to double-check
fraying is uncommon English at frequency #66,673 among 2,507 “F” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed /ˈfɹeɪ.ɪŋ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "present participle and gerund of fray".
No generated misspelling entries exist for fraying in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is fraying, spelled F-R-A-Y-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1present participle and gerund of fray
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 "fraying", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).