lawfulness
"lawfulness" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“lawfulness” is uncommon English (frequency #77,854 among 16,425 “L” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #77,854
- frequency rank, English
- 16,425
- “L” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Property of being lawful, of obeying the law.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lawfulness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #77,854 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “lawfulness” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
lawfulness is uncommon English at frequency #77,854 among 16,425 “L” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
lawfulness doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English laufulnes, lahfulnesse, equivalent to lawful + -ness. The correct English form is lawfulness, spelled L-A-W-F-U-L-N-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Property of being lawful, of obeying the law.
- 2Property of operating in a manner organized by certain laws, such as laws of nature.
Etymology
From Middle English laufulnes, lahfulnesse, equivalent to lawful + -ness.
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 “lawfulness”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is L-A-W-F-U-L-N-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.