selflessly
"selflessly" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“selflessly” is uncommon English (frequency #50,795 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,795
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - In a selfless manner; done in a way that disregards concerns for the self and places other first.
Corpus desk
Index EN-selflessly · selflessly · English
selflessly · rank #50,795 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #50,795
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH seaplane
Nearest frequency peer: seaplane (-2 rank slots)
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.
Long-tail ranks near “selflessly”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer
49,211 corpus weight
- seaplane
seaplane
49,208 corpus weight
- selflessly
selflessly
49,206 corpus weight
- sequester
sequester
49,204 corpus weight
- Shetty
Shetty
49,203 corpus weight
- sidecar
sidecar
49,201 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “selflessly” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | selflessly |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #50,795 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “selflessly” in English
Rare enough to double-check
selflessly is uncommon English at frequency #50,795 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anadverb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "In a selfless manner; done in a way that disregards concerns for the self and places other first.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for selflessly, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From selfless + -ly. The correct English form is selflessly, spelled S-E-L-F-L-E-S-S-L-Y.
Definition
- 1In a selfless manner; done in a way that disregards concerns for the self and places other first.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how selflessly appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
They’re the first non-mammals observed helping each other in this way, suggesting other animals have evolved the ability to act selflessly.
Etymology
From selfless + -ly.
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.
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "selflessly", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).