Salonica
"salonica" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Salonica” is uncommon English (frequency #98,678 among 54,294 “S” headwords), classed as a proper noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #98,678
- frequency rank, English
- 54,294
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Synonym of Thessaloniki: a port city, the capital of Central Macedonia, in northern Greece.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Salonica |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #98,678 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Salonica” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
Salonica is uncommon English at frequency #98,678 among 54,294 “S” headwords, classed as aproper noun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Synonym of Thessaloniki: a port city, the capital of Central Macedonia, in northern Greece.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for Salonica, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Medieval Latin Salonica, from Byzantine Greek Σαλονίκη (Saloníkē), clipping of Ancient Greek Θεσσαλονίκη (Thessaloníkē), named for Thessalonike daughter of Philip II, half-sister of Alexander the Great, and wife of Cassander of Macedonia, from Θεσσᾰλός… The correct English form is Salonica, spelled S-A-L-O-N-I-C-A.
Definition
- 1Synonym of Thessaloniki: a port city, the capital of Central Macedonia, in northern Greece.
Etymology
From Medieval Latin Salonica, from Byzantine Greek Σαλονίκη (Saloníkē), clipping of Ancient Greek Θεσσαλονίκη (Thessaloníkē), named for Thessalonike daughter of Philip II, half-sister of Alexander the Great, and wife of Cassander of Macedonia, from Θεσσᾰλός (Thessălós, “Thessalian”) + νῑ́κη (nī́kē, “victory”), possibly named for her birth on the anniversary of the Battle of Crocus Field. Sometimes parsed as a clipping within English of Thessalonica. Originally and still chiefly as a calque of Ottoman Turkish سلانیك (Selânik); now with occasional reference to modern Greek Σαλονίκη (Saloníki).
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 “Salonica”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-A-L-O-N-I-C-A - 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.