hawkish
/ˈhɔːkɪʃ/
"hawkish" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hawkish” is uncommon English (frequency #57,421 among 2,646 “H” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #57,421
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Resembling a hawk in appearance or behaviour.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hawkish · hawkish · English
hawkish · rank #57,421 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #57,421
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH Hasegawa
Nearest frequency peer: Hasegawa (-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 “hawkish”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- hairdryer
hairdryer
42,584 corpus weight
- harmlessly
harmlessly
42,582 corpus weight
- Hasegawa
Hasegawa
42,581 corpus weight
- hawkish
hawkish
42,580 corpus weight
- heightening
heightening
42,578 corpus weight
- HEMA
HEMA
42,576 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “hawkish” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hawkish |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈhɔːkɪʃ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #57,421 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hawkish” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hawkish is uncommon English at frequency #57,421 among 2,646 “H” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /ˈhɔːkɪʃ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for hawkish in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From hawk + -ish. The correct English form is hawkish, spelled H-A-W-K-I-S-H.
Definition
- 1Resembling a hawk in appearance or behaviour.
- 2Supportive of warlike foreign policy; bellicose; inclined toward military action.
- 3Favouring increasing interest rates; inclined towards increasing interest rates.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hawkish appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The Prime Minister could count on the support of a hawkish majority in Parliament to support the invasion.
This was not the first disagreement between the ultra-hawkish Bolton and the occasionally more intervention-skeptic Trump.
Etymology
From hawk + -ish.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "hawkish", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).