quinquennial
/kwɪŋˈkwɛ.ni.əl/
"quinquennial" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“quinquennial” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Of or related to a five-year period.
Corpus desk
Index EN-quinquennial · quinquennial · English
quinquennial · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "Q" 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 | quinquennial |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /kwɪŋˈkwɛ.ni.əl/ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “quinquennial” in English
Rare enough to double-check
quinquennial is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed /kwɪŋˈkwɛ.ni.əl/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Of or related to a five-year period.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for quinquennial, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Latin quīnquenniālis, from quīnquennium (“5-year period”) + -ālis, from quīnquennis (“5-year”) + -ium (“-ium: forming abstract nouns”), from quīnque (“five”) + annus (“year”) + -is (suffix forming compound adjectives). The correct English form is quinquennial, spelled Q-U-I-N-Q-U-E-N-N-I-A-L.
Definition
- 1Of or related to a five-year period.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how quinquennial appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
By a singular coincidence, the great master of the Dorian lyre was born during the celebration of the Pythia, the quinquennial festival of Apollo[…]
The best data that BEA have come from the quinquennial censuses of business; these are used to “benchmark” the national accounts every five years and to compute new input-output tables.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin quīnquenniālis, from quīnquennium (“5-year period”) + -ālis, from quīnquennis (“5-year”) + -ium (“-ium: forming abstract nouns”), from quīnque (“five”) + annus (“year”) + -is (suffix forming compound adjectives).
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.