selective
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
9 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "selective", 9-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "selective" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "selective" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
selective is anEnglishadj. It means: Of or relating to the process of selection. Pronounced /səˈlɛktɪv/. It ranks #8,604 in English word frequency. Often confused with selectively and selection.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | selective |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /səˈlɛktɪv/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #8,604 |
| Misspellings tracked | 13 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for selective is 9 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /səˈlɛktɪv/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,604 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 13 documented wrong-spelling variants for selective, with forms such as "eslective", "seelctive", and "selcetive". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "selectively", "selection", "seductive", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is selective, spelled S-E-L-E-C-T-I-V-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Of or relating to the process of selection.
- 2Of or relating to natural selection.
- 3Choosy, fussy or discriminating when selecting.
- 4Having the authority or capability to make a selection.
- 5Of or relating to the social work approach called selectivity.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: eslective,seelctive,selcetive,selecctive,selecitve,selectiev,selectivve,selecttive,selectvie,seletcive,sellective,sleective,sselective
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for selective
Misspelling Variants of "selective"
Frequency rank: #8,604 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: