poignancy
/ˈpɔɪnjən(t)si/
"poignancy" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“poignancy” is uncommon English (frequency #63,147 among 4,417 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #63,147
- frequency rank, English
- 4,417
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The quality of being poignant
Corpus desk
Index EN-poignancy · poignancy · English
poignancy · rank #63,147 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #63,147
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,417
- PHOTO-FINISH playpen
Nearest frequency peer: playpen (-2 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.
Long-tail ranks near “poignancy”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- pish
pish
36,858 corpus weight
- Pitcairn
Pitcairn
36,857 corpus weight
- playpen
playpen
36,856 corpus weight
- poignancy
poignancy
36,854 corpus weight
- Pollux
Pollux
36,852 corpus weight
- Pottsville
Pottsville
36,851 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “poignancy” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | poignancy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɔɪnjən(t)si/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #63,147 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “poignancy” in English
Rare enough to double-check
poignancy is uncommon English at frequency #63,147 among 4,417 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈpɔɪnjən(t)si/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The quality of being poignant".
No generated misspelling entries exist for poignancy in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is poignancy, spelled P-O-I-G-N-A-N-C-Y.
Definition
- 1The quality of being poignant
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how poignancy appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The Conan O’Brien-penned half-hour has the capacity to rip our collective hearts out the way the cute, funny bad girl next door does to Bart when she reveals that her new boyfriend is Jimbo Jones, but the show keeps shying away from genuine emotion in favor of jokes that, while overwhelmingly funny, detract from the poignancy and the emotional intimacy of…
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 "poignancy", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).