motu
"motu" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“motu” is uncommon English (frequency #64,559 among 36,575 “M” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #64,559
- frequency rank, English
- 36,575
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A reef islet formed by broken coral and sand, surrounding an atoll.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | motu |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #64,559 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “motu” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
motu is uncommon English at frequency #64,559 among 36,575 “M” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A reef islet formed by broken coral and sand, surrounding an atoll.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for motu, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From a descendant of Proto-Polynesian *motu. The correct English form is motu, spelled M-O-T-U.
Definition
- 1A reef islet formed by broken coral and sand, surrounding an atoll.
Etymology
From a descendant of Proto-Polynesian *motu.
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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Using “motu”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-O-T-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.