hesitancy
"hesitancy" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hesitancy” is uncommon English (frequency #62,966 among 2,646 “H” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #62,966
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A pausing or halting before beginning a task, often as a result of some fear or uncertainty about the outcome.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hesitancy · hesitancy · English
hesitancy · rank #62,966 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #62,966
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH Hickson
Nearest frequency peer: Hickson (+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 “hesitancy”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- herbalist
herbalist
37,039 corpus weight
- Herkimer
Herkimer
37,037 corpus weight
- hesitancy
hesitancy
37,035 corpus weight
- Hickson
Hickson
37,034 corpus weight
- hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
37,033 corpus weight
- Hindmarsh
Hindmarsh
37,031 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “hesitancy” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hesitancy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #62,966 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hesitancy” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hesitancy is uncommon English at frequency #62,966 among 2,646 “H” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A pausing or halting before beginning a task, often as a result of some fear or uncertainty about the outcome.".
No misspelling variants are generated for hesitancy in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin haesitantia. By surface analysis, hesitant + -cy. The correct English form is hesitancy, spelled H-E-S-I-T-A-N-C-Y.
Definition
- 1A pausing or halting before beginning a task, often as a result of some fear or uncertainty about the outcome.
Etymology
From Latin haesitantia. By surface analysis, hesitant + -cy.
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 "hesitancy", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).