high school
/ˈhaɪ.skul/
"high-school" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“high school” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An institution which provides all or part of secondary education.
Corpus desk
Index EN-high-school · high school · English
high school · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "H" 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 | high school |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈhaɪ.skul/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “high school” in English
Rare enough to double-check
high school is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈhaɪ.skul/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
high school doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English hyȝ scole (“school for higher education”), equivalent to high + school. Cognate with Dutch hogeschool (“academy, university, graduate school”), German Hochschule (“academy, college, university”). The correct English form is high school, spelled H-I-G-H- -S-C-H-O-O-L.
Definition
- 1An institution which provides all or part of secondary education.
- 2A secondary school.
- 3A secondary education school, consisting of junior high school and senior high school (grades 7-12)
- 4A secondary education school for years 1-4 (now junior high school)
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English hyȝ scole (“school for higher education”), equivalent to high + school. Cognate with Dutch hogeschool (“academy, university, graduate school”), German Hochschule (“academy, college, university”).
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.