paternalistic
"paternalistic" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“paternalistic” is an uncommon English word, ranked #55,635 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #55,635
- frequency rank, English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - the quality of being paternal, i.e. like a father, e.g. characterized by behaving in a benevolent yet intrusive manner towards underlings
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | paternalistic |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 13 |
| Frequency rank | #55,635 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “paternalistic” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for paternalistic is 13 letters long, classified as an adjective. Corpus data places it at rank #55,635 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.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for paternalistic, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From paternal + -istic. The correct English form is paternalistic, spelled P-A-T-E-R-N-A-L-I-S-T-I-C.
Definition
- 1the quality of being paternal, i.e. like a father, e.g. characterized by behaving in a benevolent yet intrusive manner towards underlings
- 2of, pertaining to, characteristic of or practicing paternalism
Etymology
From paternal + -istic.
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 “paternalistic”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-A-T-E-R-N-A-L-I-S-T-I-C - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.