ratepayer
"ratepayer" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ratepayer” is uncommon English (frequency #94,169 among 21,470 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #94,169
- frequency rank, English
- 21,470
- “R” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Someone who pays for a public utility or service.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ratepayer |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #94,169 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ratepayer” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
ratepayer is uncommon English at frequency #94,169 among 21,470 “R” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Someone who pays for a public utility or service.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for ratepayer, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. 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: From rate + payer. The correct English form is ratepayer, spelled R-A-T-E-P-A-Y-E-R.
Definition
- 1Someone who pays for a public utility or service.
Etymology
From rate + payer.
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 “ratepayer”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-A-T-E-P-A-Y-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.