polyphony
/pəˈlɪfəni/
"polyphony" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“polyphony” is uncommon English (frequency #66,206 among 4,417 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #66,206
- frequency rank, English
- 4,417
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Musical texture consisting of several independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony).
Corpus desk
Index EN-polyphony · polyphony · English
polyphony · rank #66,206 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #66,206
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,417
- PHOTO-FINISH Pontefract
Nearest frequency peer: Pontefract (+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.
Long-tail ranks near “polyphony”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- plaintext
plaintext
33,802 corpus weight
- Plante
Plante
33,801 corpus weight
- polyphony
polyphony
33,795 corpus weight
- Pontefract
Pontefract
33,794 corpus weight
- pothead
pothead
33,791 corpus weight
- preemptively
preemptively
33,790 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “polyphony” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | polyphony |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pəˈlɪfəni/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #66,206 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “polyphony” in English
Rare enough to double-check
polyphony is uncommon English at frequency #66,206 among 4,417 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /pəˈlɪfəni/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for polyphony, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek πολυφωνία (poluphōnía); equivalent to poly- + -phony. The correct English form is polyphony, spelled P-O-L-Y-P-H-O-N-Y.
Definition
- 1Musical texture consisting of several independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony).
- 2The quality of a text of being able to be read in more than one way.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how polyphony appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
the polyphony of a biblical passage
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek πολυφωνία (poluphōnía); equivalent to poly- + -phony.
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 "polyphony", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).