Late Antiquity
"late-antiquity" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Late Antiquity” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a proper noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The period of Mediterranean and Eurasian history from around the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE, marked especially by the transition from the Roman and Persian Empires to the Middle Ages and the Islam...
Corpus desk
Index EN-late-antiquity · Late Antiquity · English
Late Antiquity · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "L" 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Late Antiquity |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “Late Antiquity” in English
Rare enough to double-check
Late Antiquity is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aproper noun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The period of Mediterranean and Eurasian history from around the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE, marked especially by the transition from the Roman and Persian Empires to the Middle Ages and the Islam...".
Late Antiquity doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: A calque of German Spätantike. Popularised in English by American historian Peter Brown with his influential 1971 book The World of Late Antiquity. The correct English form is Late Antiquity, spelled L-A-T-E- -A-N-T-I-Q-U-I-T-Y.
Definition
- 1The period of Mediterranean and Eurasian history from around the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE, marked especially by the transition from the Roman and Persian Empires to the Middle Ages and the Islamic and Byzantine civilizations.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how Late Antiquity appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The production of coins for jewelry, on the other hand, was prosecuted as high treason or a crimen maiestatis: counterfeiting coin always constituted a major offense, and in Late Antiquity it became a sacrilege.
Unlike Jews and Manichaeans, who could be found in most parts of the Roman empire during Late Antiquity, Zoroastrians were a geographically and numerically restricted religious group, confined to certain eastern provinces, especially in Asia Minor.
Etymology
A calque of German Spätantike. Popularised in English by American historian Peter Brown with his influential 1971 book The World of Late Antiquity.
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.