kendo
"kendo" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“kendo” is uncommon English (frequency #53,644 among 1,236 “K” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #53,644
- frequency rank, English
- 1,236
- “K” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A Japanese martial art using "swords" of split bamboo.
Corpus desk
Index EN-kendo · kendo · English
kendo · rank #53,644 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #53,644
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,236
- PHOTO-FINISH Katowice
Nearest frequency peer: Katowice (-2 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.
Long-tail ranks near “kendo”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Kailash
Kailash
46,362 corpus weight
- Kaspersky
Kaspersky
46,360 corpus weight
- Katowice
Katowice
46,359 corpus weight
- kendo
kendo
46,357 corpus weight
- kha
kha
46,355 corpus weight
- knockoff
knockoff
46,351 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “kendo” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kendo |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #53,644 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “kendo” in English
Rare enough to double-check
kendo is uncommon English at frequency #53,644 among 1,236 “K” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A Japanese martial art using "swords" of split bamboo.".
Zero misspellings are on record for kendo in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Japanese 剣道 (kendō, “the way of the sword”), from Middle Chinese 劍 (kjæ̀m, “sword”) + 道 (dáu, “way”). Doublet of kumdo. The correct English form is kendo, spelled K-E-N-D-O.
Definition
- 1A Japanese martial art using "swords" of split bamboo.
Etymology
Borrowed from Japanese 剣道 (kendō, “the way of the sword”), from Middle Chinese 劍 (kjæ̀m, “sword”) + 道 (dáu, “way”). Doublet of kumdo.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "kendo", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).