sacrilegious
/sæk.ɹəˈlɪd͡ʒ.əs/
"sacrilegious" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sacrilegious” is uncommon English (frequency #57,692 among 54,294 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #57,692
- frequency rank, English
- 54,294
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Committing sacrilege; acting or speaking very disrespectfully toward what is held to be sacred.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sacrilegious |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /sæk.ɹəˈlɪd͡ʒ.əs/ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #57,692 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sacrilegious” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
sacrilegious is uncommon English at frequency #57,692 among 54,294 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /sæk.ɹəˈlɪd͡ʒ.əs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Committing sacrilege; acting or speaking very disrespectfully toward what is held to be sacred.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for sacrilegious, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Compare sacrilege, Latin sacrilegus. From Latin sacer + legō (“steal something sacred”). The correct English form is sacrilegious, spelled S-A-C-R-I-L-E-G-I-O-U-S.
Definition
- 1Committing sacrilege; acting or speaking very disrespectfully toward what is held to be sacred.
Etymology
Compare sacrilege, Latin sacrilegus. From Latin sacer + legō (“steal something sacred”).
This word in other languages
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 “sacrilegious”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-A-C-R-I-L-E-G-I-O-U-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /sæk.ɹəˈlɪd͡ʒ.əs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- 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.