refraining
"refraining" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“refraining” is uncommon English (frequency #54,432 among 3,094 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #54,432
- frequency rank, English
- 3,094
- “R” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The act of one who refrains from doing something.
Corpus desk
Index EN-refraining · refraining · English
refraining · rank #54,432 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #54,432
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,094
- PHOTO-FINISH reflexively
Nearest frequency peer: reflexively (-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 “refraining”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Rawson
Rawson
45,574 corpus weight
- realness
realness
45,573 corpus weight
- reflexively
reflexively
45,570 corpus weight
- refraining
refraining
45,569 corpus weight
- resize
resize
45,566 corpus weight
- Rhineland
Rhineland
45,564 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “refraining” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| 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) |
Long-tail rank of “refraining” in English
Rare enough to double-check
refraining is uncommon English at frequency #54,432 among 3,094 “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.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how refraining appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Their refrainings from evil are members of at least one active causal chain[…]
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "refraining", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).