keelboat

noun

"keelboat" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“keelboat” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
8
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Any sailboat having a keel (as opposed to a centerboard or daggerboard).

Corpus desk

Index EN-keelboat · keelboat · English

keelboat · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "K" 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 keelboat
PropertyValue
Headwordkeelboat
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters8
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “keelboat” in English

keelboatranks 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

keelboat is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Any sailboat having a keel (as opposed to a centerboard or daggerboard).".

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for keelboat, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: From keel + boat. The correct English form is keelboat, spelled K-E-E-L-B-O-A-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    Any sailboat having a keel (as opposed to a centerboard or daggerboard).

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years, these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.

Etymology

From keel + boat.

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 "keelboat"?
"keelboat" is spelled K-E-E-L-B-O-A-T.
What does "keelboat" mean?
As a noun, "keelboat" means: Any sailboat having a keel (as opposed to a centerboard or daggerboard).
What is the origin of the word "keelboat"?
From keel + boat. See the full etymology section above for more details.
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