maladaptive
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
11 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "maladaptive", 11-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "maladaptive" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "maladaptive" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
maladaptive is anEnglishadj. It means: Of behavior, showing inadequate or counterproductive mental and behavioral adaptation to a new situation. Pronounced /ˌmæləˈdæptɪv/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | maladaptive |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˌmæləˈdæptɪv/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #65,284 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for maladaptive is 11 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌmæləˈdæptɪv/. Corpus data places it at rank #65,284 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for maladaptive in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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 mal- + adaptive. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is maladaptive, spelled M-A-L-A-D-A-P-T-I-V-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Of behavior, showing inadequate or counterproductive mental and behavioral adaptation to a new situation.
- 2Of anatomy, physiology, or behavior, showing inadequate or counterproductive evolutionary adaptation to an environment or its changes.
Etymology
From mal- + adaptive.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #65,284 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: