openness
"openness" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“openness” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #17,195 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #17,195
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviors, cultures, peoples, environments, experiences, etc., different from the familiar, conventional, traditional, or one's own.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | openness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #17,195 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “openness” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for openness is 8 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #17,195 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for openness, with forms such as "oepnness", "openenss", and "openess". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "oneness", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English *opennesse, from Old English openness (“openness, publicity”), equivalent to open + -ness. Cognate with Old High German offannussi (“disclosure, revelation, openness”). The correct English form is openness, spelled O-P-E-N-N-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviors, cultures, peoples, environments, experiences, etc., different from the familiar, conventional, traditional, or one's own.
- 2The degree to which a person, group, organization, institution, or society exhibits this liberal attitude or opinion.
- 3Lack of secrecy; candour, transparency.
- 4The degree of accessibility to view, use, and modify in a shared environment with legal rights generally held in common and preventing proprietary restrictions on the right of others to continue viewing, using, modifying and sharing.
- 5The degree to which a system operates with distinct boundaries across which exchange occurs capable of inducing change in the system while maintaining the boundaries themselves.
Etymology
From Middle English *opennesse, from Old English openness (“openness, publicity”), equivalent to open + -ness. Cognate with Old High German offannussi (“disclosure, revelation, openness”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: oepnness,openenss,openess,opennes,opennses,opneness,oppenness,poenness
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of openness - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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
How do you spell "openness"?
What does "openness" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "openness"?
What is the origin of the word "openness"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “openness”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is O-P-E-N-N-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “oneness” - see the side-by-side comparison. openness vs oneness
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.