quist
"quist" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“quist” is uncommon English (frequency #98,620 among 288 “Q” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #98,620
- frequency rank, English
- 288
- “Q” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The wood pigeon, Columba palumbus.
Corpus desk
Index EN-quist · quist · English
quist · rank #98,620 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #98,620
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 288
- PHOTO-FINISH Queensbury
Nearest frequency peer: Queensbury (-2 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 “quist”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- qasr
qasr
1,386 corpus weight
- quahog
quahog
1,384 corpus weight
- Queensbury
Queensbury
1,383 corpus weight
- quist
quist
1,381 corpus weight
- Raftery
Raftery
1,379 corpus weight
- rame
rame
1,377 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “quist” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | quist |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #98,620 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “quist” in English
Rare enough to double-check
quist is uncommon English at frequency #98,620 among 288 “Q” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The wood pigeon, Columba palumbus.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for quist, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English quiste, quyste, quyshte, variants of Middle English couschot, cowschote, cowscott, from Old English cūsċeote (“wood pigeon, ringdove”). Doublet of cushat. The correct English form is quist, spelled Q-U-I-S-T.
Definition
- 1The wood pigeon, Columba palumbus.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how quist appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It got me thinking about other names we used to call things when we were younger that for some reason as I got older we stopped doing.¶ For example the common woody was a quist, and the sparrow that we so used to love hunting on the summer hedgerows, once the wheat had been cut, were "spugs or spuggies"
Etymology
From Middle English quiste, quyste, quyshte, variants of Middle English couschot, cowschote, cowscott, from Old English cūsċeote (“wood pigeon, ringdove”). Doublet of cushat.
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 "quist"?
What does "quist" mean?
What is the origin of the word "quist"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "quist", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).