klaxon
/ˈklæksən/
"klaxon" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“klaxon” is an uncommon English word, ranked #86,432 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #86,432
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A loud electric alarm or horn, especially as used in automobiles in the early 20th century.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | klaxon |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈklæksən/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #86,432 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “klaxon” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for klaxon is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈklæksən/. Corpus data places it at rank #86,432 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A loud electric alarm or horn, especially as used in automobiles in the early 20th century.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for klaxon, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: From the trademark Klaxon, based on Ancient Greek κλάζω (klázō, “make a sharp sound; scream”). The word was coined by Franklyn Hallett Lovell Jr., the founder of the Lovell-McConnell Manufacturing Co. of Newark, New Jersey, USA, which in 1908 obtained a lic… The correct English form is klaxon, spelled K-L-A-X-O-N.
Definition
- 1A loud electric alarm or horn, especially as used in automobiles in the early 20th century.
Etymology
From the trademark Klaxon, based on Ancient Greek κλάζω (klázō, “make a sharp sound; scream”). The word was coined by Franklyn Hallett Lovell Jr., the founder of the Lovell-McConnell Manufacturing Co. of Newark, New Jersey, USA, which in 1908 obtained a licence of the patent to the machine generating the sound from American inventor Miller Reese Hutchison (1876–1944).
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 “klaxon”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is K-L-A-X-O-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈklæksən/ (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.