Secretary General
"secretary-general" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Secretary General” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 17
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The chief administrator of an international body such as NATO or the United Nations.
Corpus desk
Index EN-secretary-general · Secretary General · English
Secretary General · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 17 letters
- VOW-7 7 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 | Secretary General |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “Secretary General” in English
Rare enough to double-check
Secretary General is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for Secretary General, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of French secrétaire général, hence the unusual order of adjective following noun (i.e., postpositive). The correct English form is Secretary General, spelled S-E-C-R-E-T-A-R-Y- -G-E-N-E-R-A-L.
Definition
- 1The chief administrator of an international body such as NATO or the United Nations.
- 2The secretary of a non-Communist political party, governmental entity, or other NGO in many countries.
Etymology
Calque of French secrétaire général, hence the unusual order of adjective following noun (i.e., postpositive).
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.