murderess
/mɜːdəˈɹɛs/
"murderess" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“murderess” is uncommon English (frequency #97,332 among 4,057 “M” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #97,332
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Female equivalent of murderer: a woman who commits murder.
Corpus desk
Index EN-murderess · murderess · English
murderess · rank #97,332 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #97,332
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH Mulhall
Nearest frequency peer: Mulhall (-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 “murderess”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Moraga
Moraga
2,674 corpus weight
- Morlock
Morlock
2,673 corpus weight
- Mrazek
Mrazek
2,672 corpus weight
- Mulhall
Mulhall
2,670 corpus weight
- murderess
murderess
2,669 corpus weight
- muscling
muscling
2,665 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “murderess” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | murderess |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /mɜːdəˈɹɛs/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #97,332 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “murderess” in English
Rare enough to double-check
murderess is uncommon English at frequency #97,332 among 4,057 “M” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /mɜːdəˈɹɛs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Female equivalent of murderer: a woman who commits murder.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for murderess, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English morderes, from Old French morderesse, moeurdrese; equivalent to murder + -ess. The correct English form is murderess, spelled M-U-R-D-E-R-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Female equivalent of murderer: a woman who commits murder.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how murderess appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
‘[…] Yet am I very fair, Kallikrates!’ / ‘I hate thee, murdress, and I have no wish to see thee.[…]’
“All the murderesses I met in prison”, she [Kathryn George-Harries] says lightly, “had committed their crimes in domestic arguments. They chose the gun. I chose to go for the Meissen. Nobody’s worth doing life for.”
Etymology
From Middle English morderes, from Old French morderesse, moeurdrese; equivalent to murder + -ess.
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 "murderess", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).