purine
/ˈpjʊəɹiːn/
"purine" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“purine” is uncommon English (frequency #77,115 among 46,516 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #77,115
- frequency rank, English
- 46,516
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Any of a class of organic heterocyclic compounds, composed of fused pyrimidine and imidazole rings, that constitute one of the two groups of organic nitrogenous bases (the other being the pyrimidin...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | purine |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpjʊəɹiːn/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #77,115 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “purine” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
purine is uncommon English at frequency #77,115 among 46,516 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈpjʊəɹiːn/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Any of a class of organic heterocyclic compounds, composed of fused pyrimidine and imidazole rings, that constitute one of the two groups of organic nitrogenous bases (the other being the pyrimidin...".
Zero misspellings are on record for purine in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from German Purin. The correct English form is purine, spelled P-U-R-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1Any of a class of organic heterocyclic compounds, composed of fused pyrimidine and imidazole rings, that constitute one of the two groups of organic nitrogenous bases (the other being the pyrimidines) and are components of nucleic acids.
Etymology
Borrowed from German Purin.
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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Using “purine”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-U-R-I-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈpjʊəɹiːn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.