legislative
/ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ɪ.slə.tɪv/
"legislative" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“legislative” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #4,170 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #4,170
- frequency rank, English
- 11
- letters
- 16
- tracked misspellings
- 3
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Making, or having the power to make, a law or laws; lawmaking.
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 | legislative |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ɪ.slə.tɪv/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #4,170 |
| Misspellings tracked | 16 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “legislative” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for legislative is 11 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ɪ.slə.tɪv/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,170 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Making, or having the power to make, a law or laws; lawmaking.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 16 likely wrong-spelling variants for legislative, with forms such as "elgislative", "leggislative", and "legilsative". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "legislature", "legislate", "legislation", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From legislate + -ive. The correct English form is legislative, spelled L-E-G-I-S-L-A-T-I-V-E.
Definition
- 1Making, or having the power to make, a law or laws; lawmaking.
Etymology
From legislate + -ive.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: elgislative,leggislative,legilsative,legisaltive,legislaitve,legislatiev,legislativve,legislattive,legislatvie,legisllative,legisltaive,legisslative,legsilative,leigslative,lgeislative,llegislative
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of legislative - 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
How do you spell "legislative"?
What does "legislative" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "legislative"?
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Using “legislative”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is L-E-G-I-S-L-A-T-I-V-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ɪ.slə.tɪv/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “legislature” - see the side-by-side comparison. legislative vs legislature
- 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.