heterozygous
"heterozygous" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“heterozygous” is uncommon English (frequency #62,198 among 2,646 “H” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #62,198
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Of an organism: having two different alleles in a given gene.
Corpus desk
Index EN-heterozygous · heterozygous · English
heterozygous · rank #62,198 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #62,198
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH hermetically
Nearest frequency peer: hermetically (-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 “heterozygous”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- headrest
headrest
37,808 corpus weight
- Heo
Heo
37,805 corpus weight
- hermetically
hermetically
37,804 corpus weight
- heterozygous
heterozygous
37,803 corpus weight
- Higginbotham
Higginbotham
37,802 corpus weight
- horry
horry
37,798 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “heterozygous” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | heterozygous |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #62,198 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “heterozygous” in English
Rare enough to double-check
heterozygous is uncommon English at frequency #62,198 among 2,646 “H” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Of an organism: having two different alleles in a given gene.".
Zero misspellings are on record for heterozygous in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From hetero- + -zygous. The correct English form is heterozygous, spelled H-E-T-E-R-O-Z-Y-G-O-U-S.
Definition
- 1Of an organism: having two different alleles in a given gene.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how heterozygous appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better.
Etymology
From hetero- + -zygous.
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 "heterozygous", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 12 letters (nearest by frequency rank).