misshapen
/mɪsˈʃeɪ.pən/
"misshapen" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“misshapen” is uncommon English (frequency #52,496 among 4,057 “M” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #52,496
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Having a bad, ugly or awkward shape; deformed; malformed; ill-shapen.
Corpus desk
Index EN-misshapen · misshapen · English
misshapen · rank #52,496 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #52,496
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH Mississippian
Nearest frequency peer: Mississippian (+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 “misshapen”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- merriment
merriment
47,513 corpus weight
- misbehave
misbehave
47,508 corpus weight
- misshapen
misshapen
47,505 corpus weight
- Mississippi…
Mississippian
47,504 corpus weight
- Mogg
Mogg
47,501 corpus weight
- moisturize
moisturize
47,499 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “misshapen” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | misshapen |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /mɪsˈʃeɪ.pən/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #52,496 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “misshapen” in English
Rare enough to double-check
misshapen is uncommon English at frequency #52,496 among 4,057 “M” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /mɪsˈʃeɪ.pən/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
misshapen doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English mysshapen, misse shapen, mysshape, mysshap; equivalent to mis- + shapen. The correct English form is misshapen, spelled M-I-S-S-H-A-P-E-N.
Definition
- 1Having a bad, ugly or awkward shape; deformed; malformed; ill-shapen.
- 2Morally or intellectually warped.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English mysshapen, misse shapen, mysshape, mysshap; equivalent to mis- + shapen.
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 "misshapen", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).