marring

verb

"marring" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“marring” is uncommon English (frequency #87,529 among 4,057 “M” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#87,529
frequency rank, English
4,057
“M” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - present participle and gerund of mar: ruining, thwarting, spoiling.

Corpus desk

Index EN-marring · marring · English

marring · rank #87,529 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #87,529
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 4,057
  • PHOTO-FINISH martinet

Nearest frequency peer: martinet (+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 “marring”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “marring” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for marring
PropertyValue
Headwordmarring
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters7
Frequency rank#87,529
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “marring” in English

Every-word frequency runs from the handful of words we use constantly (left) to the long tail used once in a blue moon (right).marringfalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Ticks step logarithmically, so each one marks a roughly tenfold drop in how often the word turns up. Rare peers in the same band: “martinet” (#87,530), “Marcion” (#87,527), “mangling” (#87,525). Among 4,057 “M” headwords, “marring” is #87,529. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

marring is uncommon English at frequency #87,529 among 4,057 “M” headwords, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "present participle and gerund of mar: ruining, thwarting, spoiling.".

marring doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is marring, spelled M-A-R-R-I-N-G.

Definition

  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of mar: ruining, thwarting, spoiling.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how marring appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. […]Hath all his ventures fail'd? What, not one hit? From Tripolis, from Mexico, from England, From Lisbon, Barbary, and India? And not one vessel scape the dreadful touch Of merchant-marring rocks?

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 "marring"?
"marring" is spelled M-A-R-R-I-N-G.
What does "marring" mean?
As a verb, "marring" means: present participle and gerund of mar: ruining, thwarting, spoiling.
What language does "marring" come from?
"marring" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "marring", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list