percussionist
"percussionist" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“percussionist” is an uncommon English word, ranked #56,356 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #56,356
- frequency rank, English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A trained musician who plays percussion instruments, as opposed to a drummer who lacks formal training.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | percussionist |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 13 |
| Frequency rank | #56,356 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “percussionist” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for percussionist is 13 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #56,356 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A trained musician who plays percussion instruments, as opposed to a drummer who lacks formal training.".
Zero misspellings are on record for percussionist in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From percussion + -ist. The correct English form is percussionist, spelled P-E-R-C-U-S-S-I-O-N-I-S-T.
Definition
- 1A trained musician who plays percussion instruments, as opposed to a drummer who lacks formal training.
Etymology
From percussion + -ist.
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 “percussionist”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-E-R-C-U-S-S-I-O-N-I-S-T - 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.