ornery
/ˈɔːnəɹi/
"ornery" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ornery” is uncommon English (frequency #64,590 among 15,494 “O” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #64,590
- frequency rank, English
- 15,494
- “O” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with; cantankerous.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ornery |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈɔːnəɹi/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #64,590 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ornery” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
ornery is uncommon English at frequency #64,590 among 15,494 “O” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /ˈɔːnəɹi/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
ornery has no tracked misspelling variants, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: A contracted or dialectal pronunciation of ordinary. Sense 3 (“ordinary, commonplace”) was the earliest sense; the meaning of the word then shifted to “inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant”—presumably due to ordinariness—and finally to sense 1 (“disagreeable… The correct English form is ornery, spelled O-R-N-E-R-Y.
Definition
- 1Disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with; cantankerous.
- 2Troublesome to deal with in a good way; mischievous, prankish, teasing.
- 3Ordinary, commonplace; hence, inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant.
Etymology
A contracted or dialectal pronunciation of ordinary. Sense 3 (“ordinary, commonplace”) was the earliest sense; the meaning of the word then shifted to “inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant”—presumably due to ordinariness—and finally to sense 1 (“disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with”).
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); 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
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Using “ornery”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is O-R-N-E-R-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈɔːnəɹi/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.