Motte
"motte" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Motte” is uncommon English (frequency #53,119 among 4,057 “M” headwords), classed as a proper noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #53,119
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A surname.
Corpus desk
Index EN-motte · Motte · English
Motte · rank #53,119 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #53,119
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH motorboat
Nearest frequency peer: motorboat (-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 “Motte”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Moravia
Moravia
46,887 corpus weight
- morphologic…
morphologically
46,885 corpus weight
- motorboat
motorboat
46,883 corpus weight
- Motte
Motte
46,882 corpus weight
- multitask
multitask
46,880 corpus weight
- Murfreesboro
Murfreesboro
46,878 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “Motte” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Motte |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #53,119 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “Motte” in English
Rare enough to double-check
Motte is uncommon English at frequency #53,119 among 4,057 “M” headwords, classed as aproper noun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A surname.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for Motte, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: * As a French, Walloon, and West Flemish surname, from Old French mot, motte (“embankment, hill, mound”), from Medieval Latin mota (“fortified height”), which could be of Celtic origin and from Gaulish *mutt, *mutta (compare Welsh mwd (“vault, arch, canopy”… The correct English form is Motte, spelled M-O-T-T-E.
Definition
- 1A surname.
Etymology
* As a French, Walloon, and West Flemish surname, from Old French mot, motte (“embankment, hill, mound”), from Medieval Latin mota (“fortified height”), which could be of Celtic origin and from Gaulish *mutt, *mutta (compare Welsh mwd (“vault, arch, canopy”), Irish móta (“moat”), though this itself could have been borrowed from the English) or otherwise of Germanic origin and from the root of mud. Compare Delamotte, Demotte, Lamotte. * As an English surname, variant of Mott. * As a German surname, perhaps from Motten in Bavaria, first attested 837, from the personal name Moto (compare *mōd (“courage, bravery”)).
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 "Motte", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).