Iroquois
/ˈɪɹ.ə.kwɔɪ/
"iroquois" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Iroquois” has 10 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #32,453. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #32,453
- frequency rank, English
- 2,140
- “I” headwords
- 10
- tracked misspellings
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A member of a confederacy of (originally) five Native American (Indian) tribes: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas.
Corpus desk
Index EN-iroquois · Iroquois · English
Iroquois · rank #32,453 · 10 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-MID #32,453
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-MID 10 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,140
- PHOTO-FINISH involuntarily
Nearest frequency peer: involuntarily (-1 rank slots)
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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “Iroquois”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- introvert
introvert
67,552 corpus weight
- invocation
invocation
67,550 corpus weight
- involuntari…
involuntarily
67,549 corpus weight
- Iroquois
Iroquois
67,548 corpus weight
- irreparable
irreparable
67,547 corpus weight
- Ivanka
Ivanka
67,545 corpus weight
What this shows “Iroquois” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Iroquois |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɪɹ.ə.kwɔɪ/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #32,453 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “Iroquois”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 10 spelling variants around Iroquois (IPA /ˈɪɹ.ə.kwɔɪ/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #32,453 among 2,140 “I” headwords. Wiktionary lists 2 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for Iroquois, with forms such as "iorquois", "iroqouis", and "iroqquois". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Etymologically, the entry records: Attested in American English since the 1660s, from French Iroquois, Hiroquois (attested since the early 1600s). The ultimate origin is uncertain. theories Missionary Charles Arnaud derived it from Montagnais irno-kué (“terrible people”). Linguist Gordon Day… The correct English form is Iroquois, spelled I-R-O-Q-U-O-I-S.
Definition
- 1A member of a confederacy of (originally) five Native American (Indian) tribes: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas.
- 2A kind of hairdo where both sides of the head are shaved, leaving only a stripe of hair in the middle.
Etymology
Attested in American English since the 1660s, from French Iroquois, Hiroquois (attested since the early 1600s). The ultimate origin is uncertain. theories Missionary Charles Arnaud derived it from Montagnais irno-kué (“terrible people”). Linguist Gordon Day notes that though no form irno "person" is attested, one is plausible (given iriniou and ilnu), but application to a non-Montagnais is unlikely, and kué is too short: the root is kwet-. Day finds support for a longer form kwedɛč ("an Iroquois", lit. "terrible, frightening person") in Pacifique's Micmac grammar, in "goetètjg", and sees "fairly good indications that the name [i.e. kwedɛč] was an ancient one for Iroquoian peoples generally", but then "irno kwedɛč" would awkwardly mean "a person, an Iroquois", which could not have been a usual term. Day theorizes the awkward phrase may nonetheless have been uttered by some interpreter and used thereafter by the unaware French, or alternatively the Montagnais may have borrowed an Iroquoian autonym whereafter Montagnais folk-etymologizers adapted it to resemble those words; for example, Mohawk i-ih rongwe (“man”) would have entered Montagnais as /iːrohkwe/. (Some earlier scholars proposed that an Iroquoian term like the Mohawk term was the direct etymon of the French.) Linguist Peter Bakker alternatively proposes that the etymon is a Basque pidgin word (h)ilokoa "killers" (mirroring Algonquian names for the Iroquois), from hil (“to kill”) and a suffix -koa (“those of”) which may be the source of some other tribal names ending in -quois. Hilokoa, as Brad Loewen notes, is ungrammatical in standard Basque (Loewen suggests irikoa (“those of the walled town”) as an alternative etymon).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- iorquois
- iroqouis
- iroqquois
- iroquios
- iroquoiss
- iroquosi
- irouqois
- irqouois
- irroquois
- rioquois
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of Iroquois - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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
How do you spell "Iroquois"?
What does "Iroquois" mean?
What are common misspellings of "Iroquois"?
How do you pronounce "Iroquois"?
What is the origin of the word "Iroquois"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "Iroquois", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (10 here; floor ≥5).