scratching post
"scratching-post" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“scratching post” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A wooden post, wrapped in a piece of carpet (or similar material), that a domestic cat is encouraged to scratch (rather than the furniture).
Corpus desk
Index EN-scratching-post · scratching post · English
scratching post · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | scratching post |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “scratching post” in English
Rare enough to double-check
scratching post is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A wooden post, wrapped in a piece of carpet (or similar material), that a domestic cat is encouraged to scratch (rather than the furniture).".
No misspelling variants are generated for scratching post in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is scratching post, spelled S-C-R-A-T-C-H-I-N-G- -P-O-S-T.
Definition
- 1A wooden post, wrapped in a piece of carpet (or similar material), that a domestic cat is encouraged to scratch (rather than the furniture).
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how scratching post appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Near-synonym: scratcher
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.