highwayman
/ˈhaɪˌweɪmən/
"highwayman" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“highwayman” is uncommon English (frequency #64,424 among 23,837 “H” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #64,424
- frequency rank, English
- 23,837
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A person, usually mounted on horseback, who robbed travelers on public roads.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | highwayman |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈhaɪˌweɪmən/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #64,424 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “highwayman” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
highwayman is uncommon English at frequency #64,424 among 23,837 “H” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈhaɪˌweɪmən/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A person, usually mounted on horseback, who robbed travelers on public roads.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for highwayman, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From highway + man. The correct English form is highwayman, spelled H-I-G-H-W-A-Y-M-A-N.
Definition
- 1A person, usually mounted on horseback, who robbed travelers on public roads.
Etymology
From highway + man.
Synonyms
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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Using “highwayman”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-I-G-H-W-A-Y-M-A-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈhaɪˌweɪmən/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.