pitch-black
"pitch-black" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pitch-black” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Very dark; without light.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pitch-black · pitch-black · English
pitch-black · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" 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 | pitch-black |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “pitch-black” in English
Rare enough to double-check
pitch-black is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Very dark; without light.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for pitch-black, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. 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 pitch (“tar”) + black. Compare West Frisian pikswart (literally “pitch-black”), Dutch pikzwart (literally “pitch-black”), German pechschwarz (literally “pitch-black”), Swedish becksvart (literally “pitch-black”), Icelandic biksvartur (literally “pitch-… The correct English form is pitch-black, spelled P-I-T-C-H---B-L-A-C-K.
Definition
- 1Very dark; without light.
Etymology
From pitch (“tar”) + black. Compare West Frisian pikswart (literally “pitch-black”), Dutch pikzwart (literally “pitch-black”), German pechschwarz (literally “pitch-black”), Swedish becksvart (literally “pitch-black”), Icelandic biksvartur (literally “pitch-black”).
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.