painless
"painless" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“painless” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #23,625 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #23,625
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 3
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Free from pain; without pain or trouble.
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 | painless |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #23,625 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “painless” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for painless is 8 letters long, classified as an adjective. Corpus data places it at rank #23,625 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for painless, with forms such as "apinless", "pailness", and "painelss". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "princess", "painters", "pointless", a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English paynles, peynlees, equivalent to pain + -less. Compare West Frisian pynleas (“painless”), Dutch pijnloos (“painless”). The correct English form is painless, spelled P-A-I-N-L-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Free from pain; without pain or trouble.
- 2Not difficult; easy.
Etymology
From Middle English paynles, peynlees, equivalent to pain + -less. Compare West Frisian pynleas (“painless”), Dutch pijnloos (“painless”).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apinless,pailness,painelss,painles,painlless,painlses,painnless,paniless,pianless,ppainless
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of painless - 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
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Using “painless”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-A-I-N-L-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “princess” - see the side-by-side comparison. painless vs princess
- 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.