prima facie
/ˈpɹiː.mə ˈfeɪ.siː/
"prima-facie" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“prima facie” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adverb. 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) - At first sight; on the face of it.
Corpus desk
Index EN-prima-facie · prima facie · English
prima facie · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-5 5 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 | prima facie |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | /ˈpɹiː.mə ˈfeɪ.siː/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “prima facie” in English
Rare enough to double-check
prima facie is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadverb, transcribed /ˈpɹiː.mə ˈfeɪ.siː/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "At first sight; on the face of it.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for prima facie in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin prīmā (“first”) + faciē (“shape, figure”), literally “at the first appearance.” The correct English form is prima facie, spelled P-R-I-M-A- -F-A-C-I-E.
Definition
- 1At first sight; on the face of it.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how prima facie appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[…] the nicest young man that ever was, — daintily gloved, patently booted, oilily curled, snowily wristbanded, with a lovely cambric (prima facie) handkerchief bound about his hyacinthine locks and polished hat.
Prima facie this may not read like a true story.
Etymology
From Latin prīmā (“first”) + faciē (“shape, figure”), literally “at the first appearance.”
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.