ignominious
/ɪɡnəˈmɪniəs/
"ignominious" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ignominious” is an uncommon English word, ranked #63,697 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #63,697
- frequency rank, English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Marked by great disgrace, dishonour, humiliation, or shame; disgraceful, shameful.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ignominious |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ɪɡnəˈmɪniəs/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #63,697 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ignominious” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ignominious is 11 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪɡnəˈmɪniəs/. Corpus data places it at rank #63,697 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Marked by great disgrace, dishonour, humiliation, or shame; disgraceful, shameful.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for ignominious, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. 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 French or Old French ignominieux, from Latin ignōminiōsus (“disgraceful”), from ignōminia (“loss of a good name, ignominy”), from ig- (“not”) + nomen (“name”) (prefix assimilated form of in-). By surface analysis, ignominy + -ious. The correct English form is ignominious, spelled I-G-N-O-M-I-N-I-O-U-S.
Definition
- 1Marked by great disgrace, dishonour, humiliation, or shame; disgraceful, shameful.
Etymology
From French or Old French ignominieux, from Latin ignōminiōsus (“disgraceful”), from ignōminia (“loss of a good name, ignominy”), from ig- (“not”) + nomen (“name”) (prefix assimilated form of in-). By surface analysis, ignominy + -ious.
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 “ignominious”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is I-G-N-O-M-I-N-I-O-U-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɪɡnəˈmɪniəs/ (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
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.