oxbow lake
"oxbow-lake" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“oxbow lake” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A crescent-shaped lake formed near a flat-valleyed river when one of its meanders becomes pinched off and isolated.
Corpus desk
Index EN-oxbow-lake · oxbow lake · English
oxbow lake · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | oxbow lake |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “oxbow lake” in English
Rare enough to double-check
oxbow lake is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A crescent-shaped lake formed near a flat-valleyed river when one of its meanders becomes pinched off and isolated.".
oxbow lake doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our dataset records no confusable match here, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is oxbow lake, spelled O-X-B-O-W- -L-A-K-E.
Definition
- 1A crescent-shaped lake formed near a flat-valleyed river when one of its meanders becomes pinched off and isolated.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how oxbow lake appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Humans called this an oxbow lake—one that had originally been part of the river.
Synonyms
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.