in place of

prep

"in-place-of" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“in place of” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a preposition. 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) - instead of

Corpus desk

Index EN-in-place-of · in place of · English

in place of · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 11 letters
  • VOW-4 4 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.

Key facts for in place of
PropertyValue
Headwordin place of
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechPreposition
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “in place of” in English

in place ofranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

in place of is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as apreposition. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "instead of".

No generated misspelling entries exist for in place of in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is in place of, spelled I-N- -P-L-A-C-E- -O-F.

Definition

  1. 1
    instead of

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how in place of appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. In place of snappy banter, there is cod philosophy about destiny and choice, and in place of Lalo Schifrin's adrenaline-pumping classic theme, there are orchestral minor chords on the soundtrack.

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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "in place of"?
"in place of" is spelled I-N- -P-L-A-C-E- -O-F.
What does "in place of" mean?
As a preposition, "in place of" means: instead of
What language does "in place of" come from?
"in place of" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list