Native American

noun

"native-american" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“Native American” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
15
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A member of some Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Corpus desk

Index EN-native-american · Native American · English

Native American · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 15 letters
  • VOW-7 7 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "N" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

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.

Key facts for Native American
PropertyValue
HeadwordNative American
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters15
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “Native American” in English

Native Americanranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

Native American is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for Native American, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is Native American, spelled N-A-T-I-V-E- -A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N.

Definition

  1. 1
    A member of some Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
  2. 2
    An Indigenous person of the contiguous United States.
  3. 3
    A resident of the United States who is not an immigrant. (Often uncapitalized: native American.)

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how Native American appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. His name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slaader, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little-travelled countryside has caused them to sink to a kin…

Synonyms

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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "Native American"?
"Native American" is spelled N-A-T-I-V-E- -A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N.
What does "Native American" mean?
As a noun, "Native American" means: A member of some Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
What language does "Native American" come from?
"Native American" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list