mothballed
/mɒθbɔːld/
"mothballed" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“mothballed” is uncommon English (frequency #70,100 among 4,057 “M” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #70,100
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - simple past and past participle of mothball
Corpus desk
Index EN-mothballed · mothballed · English
mothballed · rank #70,100 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #70,100
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH Moselle
Nearest frequency peer: Moselle (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “mothballed”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- misspell
misspell
29,912 corpus weight
- Moga
Moga
29,910 corpus weight
- moreso
moreso
29,904 corpus weight
- Moselle
Moselle
29,902 corpus weight
- mothballed
mothballed
29,901 corpus weight
- Muharram
Muharram
29,898 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “mothballed” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mothballed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /mɒθbɔːld/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #70,100 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mothballed” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
mothballed is uncommon English at frequency #70,100 among 4,057 “M” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed /mɒθbɔːld/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "simple past and past participle of mothball".
mothballed has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is mothballed, spelled M-O-T-H-B-A-L-L-E-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of mothball
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 3, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "mothballed", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
What to do next
You've looked up "mothballed". Here's where to go from here.
- Usage frequency rank #70,100 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more English words in the "M" letter cohort. M–Z browse
- PlainSpell rotates a curated Word of the Day from the English corpus, a passive way to discover vocabulary. Word of the Day
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.