obliviate
"obliviate" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“obliviate” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To forget; to wipe from existence.
Corpus desk
Index EN-obliviate · obliviate · English
obliviate · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "O" 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 | obliviate |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “obliviate” in English
Rare enough to double-check
obliviate is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To forget; to wipe from existence.".
Zero misspellings are on record for obliviate in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From oblivion + -ate (verb-forming suffix), itself either from Old French oblivion (13th century) or directly from Latin oblīviō, ultimately from oblīvīscor (“to forget”), originally “even out, smooth over, erase”; further perhaps from ob- (“against, toward… The correct English form is obliviate, spelled O-B-L-I-V-I-A-T-E.
Definition
- 1To forget; to wipe from existence.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how obliviate appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Near-synonym: obliterate
Time has not yet obliviated the veneration of our jacobins for France, while she was seething with faction and blood […]
Etymology
From oblivion + -ate (verb-forming suffix), itself either from Old French oblivion (13th century) or directly from Latin oblīviō, ultimately from oblīvīscor (“to forget”), originally “even out, smooth over, erase”; further perhaps from ob- (“against, towards”) + the root of lēvis (“smooth”) + -scor (“forming inchoative verbs”).
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.