kilter
/ˈkɪltə/
"kilter" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“kilter” is uncommon English (frequency #54,284 among 9,255 “K” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #54,284
- frequency rank, English
- 9,255
- “K” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Chiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kilter |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkɪltə/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #54,284 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “kilter” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
kilter is uncommon English at frequency #54,284 among 9,255 “K” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈkɪltə/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Chiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for kilter, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: A variant of dialectal kelter (“good condition, order”), of unknown origin; possibly related to kilt (“to gather up (skirts) around the body”) (cognate with Danish kilte (“to tuck”)), or Scots kilt (“proper way of doing something, knack”) (probably from kil… The correct English form is kilter, spelled K-I-L-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1Chiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.
Etymology
A variant of dialectal kelter (“good condition, order”), of unknown origin; possibly related to kilt (“to gather up (skirts) around the body”) (cognate with Danish kilte (“to tuck”)), or Scots kilt (“proper way of doing something, knack”) (probably from kilt (“a slope; a tilt”), possibly a variant of English tilt). In the 19th century, kelter was the more common form in the United Kingdom, while kilter was more common in the United States. Due to the influence of the latter, kilter is now the more prevalent form in all English varieties.
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.
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Using “kilter”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is K-I-L-T-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈkɪltə/ (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
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.