gigawatt
/ˈɡɪɡəˌwɒt/
"gigawatt" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“gigawatt” is uncommon English (frequency #99,310 among 18,276 “G” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #99,310
- frequency rank, English
- 18,276
- “G” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - One thousand million (10⁹) watts, an amount of power large enough to power such things as a midsize town or several small ones. (Consuming 1 gigawatt during a duration of 1 hour consumes 1 gigawatt...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | gigawatt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɡɪɡəˌwɒt/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #99,310 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “gigawatt” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
gigawatt is uncommon English at frequency #99,310 among 18,276 “G” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈɡɪɡəˌwɒt/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for gigawatt in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: From giga- + watt. The correct English form is gigawatt, spelled G-I-G-A-W-A-T-T.
Definition
- 1One thousand million (10⁹) watts, an amount of power large enough to power such things as a midsize town or several small ones. (Consuming 1 gigawatt during a duration of 1 hour consumes 1 gigawatt-hour of energy.)
- 2The amount of data center capacity or amount of compute that this amount of power can provide under the current technological state of the art (PUE, clock speed, etc).
Etymology
From giga- + watt.
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 “gigawatt”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-I-G-A-W-A-T-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈɡɪɡəˌwɒt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- 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.