plaintive
/ˈpleɪntɪv/
"plaintive" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“plaintive” is uncommon English (frequency #55,648 among 4,417 “P” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #55,648
- frequency rank, English
- 4,417
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sounding sorrowful, mournful or melancholic.
Corpus desk
Index EN-plaintive · plaintive · English
plaintive · rank #55,648 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #55,648
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,417
- PHOTO-FINISH pith
Nearest frequency peer: pith (-1 rank slots)
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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “plaintive”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- pharmacokin…
pharmacokinetics
44,358 corpus weight
- pith
pith
44,354 corpus weight
- plaintive
plaintive
44,353 corpus weight
- plotter
plotter
44,351 corpus weight
- Poehler
Poehler
44,350 corpus weight
- policyholder
policyholder
44,349 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “plaintive” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | plaintive |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈpleɪntɪv/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #55,648 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “plaintive” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
plaintive is uncommon English at frequency #55,648 among 4,417 “P” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /ˈpleɪntɪv/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Sounding sorrowful, mournful or melancholic.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for plaintive, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our dataset records no confusable match here, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English pleintif, plentyff, from Old French pleintif (“aggrieved, lamenting”) (whence modern French plaintif), from plainte (“lament, complaint”); see plaint. Doublet of plaintiff. The correct English form is plaintive, spelled P-L-A-I-N-T-I-V-E.
Definition
- 1Sounding sorrowful, mournful or melancholic.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how plaintive appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
a typically plaintive song from Radiohead
I can see by your plaintive smile something is wrong, so spill it.
Etymology
From Middle English pleintif, plentyff, from Old French pleintif (“aggrieved, lamenting”) (whence modern French plaintif), from plainte (“lament, complaint”); see plaint. Doublet of plaintiff.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "plaintive", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
What to do next
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- Usage frequency rank #55,648 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
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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.