refraining
"refraining" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“refraining” is uncommon English (frequency #54,432 among 21,470 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #54,432
- frequency rank, English
- 21,470
- “R” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The act of one who refrains from doing something.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | refraining |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #54,432 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “refraining” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
refraining is uncommon English at frequency #54,432 among 21,470 “R” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The act of one who refrains from doing something.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for refraining, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. 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.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is refraining, spelled R-E-F-R-A-I-N-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The act of one who refrains from doing something.
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 “refraining”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-E-F-R-A-I-N-I-N-G - 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.