loess
/lɜːs/
"loess" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“loess” is uncommon English (frequency #66,805 among 2,297 “L” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #66,805
- frequency rank, English
- 2,297
- “L” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Any sediment, dominated by silt, of eolian (wind-blown) origin.
Corpus desk
Index EN-loess · loess · English
loess · rank #66,805 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #66,805
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,297
- PHOTO-FINISH Lom
Nearest frequency peer: Lom (+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 “loess”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Laurentian
Laurentian
33,204 corpus weight
- lensing
lensing
33,200 corpus weight
- loess
loess
33,196 corpus weight
- Lom
Lom
33,195 corpus weight
- loudmouth
loudmouth
33,193 corpus weight
- lunt
lunt
33,190 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “loess” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | loess |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /lɜːs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #66,805 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “loess” in English
Rare enough to double-check
loess is uncommon English at frequency #66,805 among 2,297 “L” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /lɜːs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Any sediment, dominated by silt, of eolian (wind-blown) origin.".
loess has no tracked misspelling variants, 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: Borrowed from German Löss (“yellowish-gray soil”), from Alemannic German lösch (“loose”). Cognate with German los and English lease. The correct English form is loess, spelled L-O-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Any sediment, dominated by silt, of eolian (wind-blown) origin.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how loess appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The Yellow River—the “Sorrow of China”—comes down from the loess hills into the great plain of China on a gently sloping fan. The river has two possible outlets to the sea, the one north of the Shantung Peninsula into the Gulf of Chihli, the other some hundreds of miles to the south of the Peninsula.
The Yellow River got its name from the massive amount of fertile loess (yellow earth) which it has deposited in the wheat-growing North China Plain.
Etymology
Borrowed from German Löss (“yellowish-gray soil”), from Alemannic German lösch (“loose”). Cognate with German los and English lease.
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 "loess", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).