nuclear family
"nuclear-family" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“nuclear family” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A family unit consisting of two parents (traditionally a mother and a father) and their children.
Corpus desk
Index EN-nuclear-family · nuclear family · English
nuclear family · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-6 6 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | nuclear family |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “nuclear family” in English
Rare enough to double-check
nuclear family is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A family unit consisting of two parents (traditionally a mother and a father) and their children.".
nuclear family has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From nuclear + family. The correct English form is nuclear family, spelled N-U-C-L-E-A-R- -F-A-M-I-L-Y.
Definition
- 1A family unit consisting of two parents (traditionally a mother and a father) and their children.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how nuclear family appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The initial result of that fragmentation, the nuclear family, didn’t seem so bad. But then, because the nuclear family is so brittle, the fragmentation continued. In many sectors of society, nuclear families fragmented into single-parent families, single-parent families into chaotic families or no families.
Etymology
From nuclear + family.
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.