quintile

noun

"quintile" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“quintile” is uncommon English (frequency #75,330 among 288 “Q” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#75,330
frequency rank, English
288
“Q” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Any of the quantiles which divide an ordered sample population into five equally numerous subsets.

Corpus desk

Index EN-quintile · quintile · English

quintile · rank #75,330 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #75,330
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 288
  • PHOTO-FINISH quickstep

Nearest frequency peer: quickstep (-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 “quintile”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “quintile” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for quintile
PropertyValue
Headwordquintile
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters8
Frequency rank#75,330
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “quintile” in English

This scale runs from the tiny cluster of words that carry ordinary speech (left) to the long tail of words almost nobody reaches for (right).quintilefalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

The axis is logarithmic, with each marked tick roughly ten times rarer than the last. Rare peers in the same band: “quickstep” (#75,329), “radioisotope” (#75,332), “quadra” (#75,327). Among 288 “Q” headwords, “quintile” is #75,330. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

quintile is uncommon English at frequency #75,330 among 288 “Q” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for quintile, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

Etymologically, the entry records: From quint- + -ile. The correct English form is quintile, spelled Q-U-I-N-T-I-L-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Any of the quantiles which divide an ordered sample population into five equally numerous subsets.
  2. 2
    A subset thus obtained.
  3. 3
    An aspect of planets that are distant from each other by one fifth of a zodiac (72°)

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how quintile appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Effectively no household making less than $28,000 will pay federal income tax – usually about 15% of the bottom income quintile has some tax liability.
  2. “It’s well known that the lowest income consumer is really struggling with inflation, but from a purely economic standpoint, it is the higher quintiles of earners that do the most spending,” Nanette Abuhoff Jacobson, global investment strategist at Hartford Funds, told CNN.

Etymology

From quint- + -ile.

Synonyms

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

How do you spell "quintile"?
"quintile" is spelled Q-U-I-N-T-I-L-E.
What does "quintile" mean?
As a noun, "quintile" means: Any of the quantiles which divide an ordered sample population into five equally numerous subsets.
What is the origin of the word "quintile"?
From quint- + -ile. See the full etymology section above for more details.
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.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "quintile", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list