ill-starred
"ill-starred" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ill-starred” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. 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) - Doomed to a bad fate; hapless.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ill-starred · ill-starred · English
ill-starred · 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 "I" 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 | ill-starred |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “ill-starred” in English
Rare enough to double-check
ill-starred is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Doomed to a bad fate; hapless.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for ill-starred, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is ill-starred, spelled I-L-L---S-T-A-R-R-E-D.
Definition
- 1Doomed to a bad fate; hapless.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ill-starred appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
"Do not name it!" answered he, passionately. "God forgive me! I cannot yet bear its name. But for its ill-starred birth, Henriette might now be living. What is there in that unconscious infant to replace its mother?"
[…] it appears the possibility of the ill-starred Uxbridge-Rickmansworth rail link being built is now bound up with post-war planning. [it was never built]
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.