furcula
"furcula" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“furcula” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A forked process or structure, generally two-pronged.
Corpus desk
Index EN-furcula · furcula · English
furcula · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | furcula |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “furcula” in English
Rare enough to double-check
furcula is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for furcula in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Latin furcula. The correct English form is furcula, spelled F-U-R-C-U-L-A.
Definition
- 1A forked process or structure, generally two-pronged.
- 2The forked bone formed by the fusion of the clavicles in birds, the wishbone or merrythought.
- 3The (two-pronged) forked, somewhat tail-like organ held bent forward and secured by a catch beneath most species of Collembola (springtails), with which they jump by releasing the catch abruptly when alarmed.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how furcula appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
In essence, a furcula is a long, rigid stick, held underneath the body at high tension. When the springtail releases that pressure, the stick pushes down into the ground, or even the water's surface, like an upside-down medieval catapult, firing the springtail into the air in a semi-controlled manner.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin furcula.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.