openness
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "openness", 8-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "openness" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "openness" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
openness is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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. Often confused with oneness.
| 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) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for openness is 8 letters long, classified as anoun. 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 Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for openness, with forms such as "oepnness", "openenss", and "openess". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "oneness", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
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”). Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is openness, spelled O-P-E-N-N-E-S-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
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
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for openness
Misspelling Variants of "openness"
Frequency rank: #17,195 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter O in our English index: