global warming
"global-warming" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“global warming” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A sustained increase in the average temperature of the Earth, sufficient to cause climate change.
Corpus desk
Index EN-global-warming · global warming · English
global warming · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "G" 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 | global warming |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “global warming” in English
Rare enough to double-check
global warming is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A sustained increase in the average temperature of the Earth, sufficient to cause climate change.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for global warming, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: First attested in the 1950s. Came into common use in the mid-1970s with Wallace Smith Broecker's paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” and Mikhail Budyko's statement in 1976 that “a global warming up has started”. The correct English form is global warming, spelled G-L-O-B-A-L- -W-A-R-M-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1A sustained increase in the average temperature of the Earth, sufficient to cause climate change.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how global warming appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
As a movie, The Day After Tomorrow is your classic computer-generated cinematic confection, only the bad guy isn't an alien or a giant lizard, it's global warming.
In the popular imagination, global warming is mostly seen as a threat to cold-loving species, and there are good reasons for this. […] But global warming is going to have just as great an impact—indeed, according to Silman, an even greater impact—in the tropics.
Etymology
First attested in the 1950s. Came into common use in the mid-1970s with Wallace Smith Broecker's paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” and Mikhail Budyko's statement in 1976 that “a global warming up has started”.
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.