quine
/kwaɪn/
"quine" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“quine” is uncommon English (frequency #62,437 among 288 “Q” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #62,437
- frequency rank, English
- 288
- “Q” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A program that produces its own source code as output.
Corpus desk
Index EN-quine · quine · English
quine · rank #62,437 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #62,437
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 288
- PHOTO-FINISH questing
Nearest frequency peer: questing (-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 “quine”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Qiang
Qiang
37,569 corpus weight
- quayside
quayside
37,567 corpus weight
- questing
questing
37,565 corpus weight
- quine
quine
37,564 corpus weight
- rationalise
rationalise
37,562 corpus weight
- razorback
razorback
37,559 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “quine” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | quine |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kwaɪn/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #62,437 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “quine” in English
Rare enough to double-check
quine is uncommon English at frequency #62,437 among 288 “Q” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /kwaɪn/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A program that produces its own source code as output.".
quine has no tracked misspelling variants, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Quine, named after the American logician and philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000). Verb etymology 1 sense 1 (“to append (a text) to a quotation of itself”) was coined by the American cognitive and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter (born … The correct English form is quine, spelled Q-U-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1A program that produces its own source code as output.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how quine appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
This has been bugging me recently. Any quines or pointers to relevant articles or web pages is appreciated. Thanks!
Self-reproducing programs are commonly called quines. Do a web search, it should turn up lots of them. There was also a quine thread here in comp.lang.c just days ago, search deja.com (the thread's title was something about self-printing programs, I think).
Etymology
From Quine, named after the American logician and philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000). Verb etymology 1 sense 1 (“to append (a text) to a quotation of itself”) was coined by the American cognitive and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter (born 1945) in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979; see the quotation), referring to Quine’s study of indirect self-reference and in particular Quine’s paradox, the following statement that produces a paradox: “‘Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation’ yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.” Hofstadter also referred to the concept of noun etymology 1 sense 1 (“program that produces its own source code as output”) in the book, but termed it a self-rep rather than a quine. Verb etymology 1 sense 2 (“to deny the importance or significance of (something obviously real or important)”) was independently coined by the American cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942–2024) in September 1969 in the original version of his work The Philosophical Lexicon: see the 1987 quotation.
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 "quine", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).