leafless
"leafless" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“leafless” is uncommon English (frequency #88,528 among 2,297 “L” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #88,528
- frequency rank, English
- 2,297
- “L” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Of plants or trees, without leaves.
Corpus desk
Index EN-leafless · leafless · English
leafless · rank #88,528 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #88,528
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,297
- PHOTO-FINISH lari
Nearest frequency peer: lari (-1 rank slots)
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.
Long-tail ranks near “leafless”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Kozlov
Kozlov
11,480 corpus weight
- labile
labile
11,476 corpus weight
- lari
lari
11,474 corpus weight
- leafless
leafless
11,473 corpus weight
- leatherback
leatherback
11,472 corpus weight
- Leonore
Leonore
11,468 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “leafless” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | leafless |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #88,528 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “leafless” in English
Rare enough to double-check
leafless is uncommon English at frequency #88,528 among 2,297 “L” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Of plants or trees, without leaves.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for leafless, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From earlier leaveless, from Middle English leveles, equivalent to leaf + -less. The correct English form is leafless, spelled L-E-A-F-L-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Of plants or trees, without leaves.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how leafless appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
In winter the leafless trees look cold.
One afternoon, when all the party from the house were riding, Adeline sauntered under the leafless, hazel hedges, which separated the pleasure domain from the park.
Etymology
From earlier leaveless, from Middle English leveles, equivalent to leaf + -less.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "leafless", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).