secondary school

noun

"secondary-school" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

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

Unranked
below top-frequency English
16
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A state school attended between the ages of 11 and 16 or 18 between primary school and university.

Corpus desk

Index EN-secondary-school · secondary school · English

secondary school · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 16 letters
  • VOW-6 6 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.

Key facts for secondary school
PropertyValue
Headwordsecondary school
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters16
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “secondary school” in English

secondary schoolsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

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

Rare enough to double-check

secondary school is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

secondary school doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is secondary school, spelled S-E-C-O-N-D-A-R-Y- -S-C-H-O-O-L.

Definition

  1. 1
    A state school attended between the ages of 11 and 16 or 18 between primary school and university.
  2. 2
    The federally designated, graduation-separated classification of grades 9–12 (approximately ages 14–18), regardless of whether they are compiled together in one school or separate from the other grades.
  3. 3
    Middle school; junior high school; a school that one attends between the ages of 12-17 (equivalent of grades 7-10 in North America, and years 7-10 in Australia).

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. One of the key roles played by the Whitby line is the transport of children from rural spots along the branch to secondary school in the coastal town.

Synonyms

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "secondary school"?
"secondary school" is spelled S-E-C-O-N-D-A-R-Y- -S-C-H-O-O-L.
What does "secondary school" mean?
As a noun, "secondary school" means: A state school attended between the ages of 11 and 16 or 18 between primary school and university.
What language does "secondary school" come from?
"secondary school" 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