killjoy
/ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/
"killjoy" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“killjoy” is an uncommon English word, ranked #70,001 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #70,001
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | killjoy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #70,001 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “killjoy” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for killjoy is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #70,001 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun.".
killjoy doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. 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.
Etymologically, the entry records: From kill + joy, first attested in 1776. The correct English form is killjoy, spelled K-I-L-L-J-O-Y.
Definition
- 1A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun.
Etymology
From kill + joy, first attested in 1776.
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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Using “killjoy”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is K-I-L-L-J-O-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.