selectman
"selectman" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“selectman” is uncommon English (frequency #79,957 among 54,294 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #79,957
- frequency rank, English
- 54,294
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Any of a board of municipal officers elected to manage some New England towns.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | selectman |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #79,957 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “selectman” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
selectman is uncommon English at frequency #79,957 among 54,294 “S” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Any of a board of municipal officers elected to manage some New England towns.".
Zero misspellings are on record for selectman in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From select + -man. The correct English form is selectman, spelled S-E-L-E-C-T-M-A-N.
Definition
- 1Any of a board of municipal officers elected to manage some New England towns.
Etymology
From select + -man.
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 “selectman”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-E-L-E-C-T-M-A-N - 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.