lawfully
"lawfully" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“lawfully” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #25,452 in English word frequency and used as an adverb.
- #25,452
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Conforming to the law; legally.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lawfully |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #25,452 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “lawfully” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lawfully is 8 letters long, classified as an adverb. Corpus data places it at rank #25,452 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Conforming to the law; legally.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for lawfully, with forms such as "alwfully", "lafwully", and "lawffully". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "lawful", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English lawefully, lawfulliche, lawefulliche; equivalent to lawful + -ly. The correct English form is lawfully, spelled L-A-W-F-U-L-L-Y.
Definition
- 1Conforming to the law; legally.
Etymology
From Middle English lawefully, lawfulliche, lawefulliche; equivalent to lawful + -ly.
Antonyms
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: alwfully,lafwully,lawffully,lawfluly,lawfullyy,lawfuly,lawfulyl,lawuflly,lawwfully,llawfully,lwafully
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of lawfully - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “lawfully”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is L-A-W-F-U-L-L-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “lawful” - see the side-by-side comparison. lawfully vs lawful
- 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.