response time

noun

"response-time" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“response time” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The period of time between the application of a stimulus and the associated response from a cell or tissue.

Corpus desk

Index EN-response-time · response time · English

response time · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 13 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "R" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

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.

Key facts for response time
PropertyValue
Headwordresponse time
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “response time” in English

response timeranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

response time is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.

No generated misspelling entries exist for response time in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is response time, spelled R-E-S-P-O-N-S-E- -T-I-M-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    The period of time between the application of a stimulus and the associated response from a cell or tissue.
  2. 2
    The time taken for a person (or human-controlled system) to respond to a request.
  3. 3
    The time taken for the display of an instrument to move to a new value following a step change.
  4. 4
    The period of time between a request for a service and the associated response; typically the request is caused by a user at a terminal hitting the return key, and the response is displayed on a screen.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Professor G. Fano (Florence), after accurately determining the "latent period," or "response time," following faradic stimulation of a given motor area
  2. the average response time on a call was 3.1 minutes

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "response time"?
"response time" is spelled R-E-S-P-O-N-S-E- -T-I-M-E.
What does "response time" mean?
As a noun, "response time" means: The period of time between the application of a stimulus and the associated response from a cell or tissue.
What language does "response time" come from?
"response time" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list