post-traumatic stress disorder

noun

"post-traumatic-stress-disorder" is a 27-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“post-traumatic stress disorder” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
30
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A psychological condition that develops following some stressful situation or event, with symptoms such as sleep disturbance, recurrent dreams, flashbacks, hypervigilance, depression, dissociation,...

Corpus desk

Index EN-post-traumatic-stress-di · post-traumatic stress disorder · English

post-traumatic stress disorder · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 30 letters
  • VOW-9 9 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.

Key facts for post-traumatic stress disorder
PropertyValue
Headwordpost-traumatic stress disorder
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters30
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “post-traumatic stress disorder” in English

post-traumatic stress disorderranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

post-traumatic stress disorder is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A psychological condition that develops following some stressful situation or event, with symptoms such as sleep disturbance, recurrent dreams, flashbacks, hypervigilance, depression, dissociation,...".

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for post-traumatic stress disorder, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.

No documented word history exists for this headword, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is post-traumatic stress disorder, spelled P-O-S-T---T-R-A-U-M-A-T-I-C- -S-T-R-E-S-S- -D-I-S-O-R-D-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    A psychological condition that develops following some stressful situation or event, with symptoms such as sleep disturbance, recurrent dreams, flashbacks, hypervigilance, depression, dissociation, withdrawal or a lack of concentration.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how post-traumatic stress disorder appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. That 200,000 public school students have been identified with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder since Sept. 11 should serve as a wake-up call for school-based mental health services for all students. We must not allow Sept. 11 to eclipse the post-traumatic stress disorders suffered by students from epidemics of H.I.V.-AIDS and community and domes…
  2. The evidence says that enormous numbers of children who live in households in high-crime neighborhoods are experiencing the psychological equivalent of battlefield conditions.[...]Studies show that many children who live under these conditions, 30 percent or more, are developing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, similar to what we used to call “she…

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "post-traumatic stress disorder"?
"post-traumatic stress disorder" is spelled P-O-S-T---T-R-A-U-M-A-T-I-C- -S-T-R-E-S-S- -D-I-S-O-R-D-E-R.
What does "post-traumatic stress disorder" mean?
As a noun, "post-traumatic stress disorder" means: A psychological condition that develops following some stressful situation or event, with symptoms such as sleep disturbance, recurrent dreams, flashbacks, hypervigilance, depression, dissociation,...
What language does "post-traumatic stress disorder" come from?
"post-traumatic stress disorder" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list