maternity leave
"maternity-leave" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“maternity leave” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A leave of absence from a job for a mother to care of a baby.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | maternity leave |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “maternity leave” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
maternity leave is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A leave of absence from a job for a mother to care of a baby.".
No misspelling variants are generated for maternity leave in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is maternity leave, spelled M-A-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y- -L-E-A-V-E.
Definition
- 1A leave of absence from a job for a mother to care of a baby.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “maternity leave”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-A-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y- -L-E-A-V-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.