selflessness
"selflessness" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“selflessness” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #46,169 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #46,169
- frequency rank, English
- 12
- letters
- 16
- tracked misspellings
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The quality or state of being selfless.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | selflessness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #46,169 |
| Misspellings tracked | 16 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “selflessness” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for selflessness is 12 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #46,169 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "The quality or state of being selfless.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 16 likely wrong-spelling variants for selflessness, with forms such as "eslflessness", "sefllessness", and "selfelssness". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From selfless + -ness. The correct English form is selflessness, spelled S-E-L-F-L-E-S-S-N-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1The quality or state of being selfless.
Etymology
From selfless + -ness.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: eslflessness,sefllessness,selfelssness,selfflessness,selflesness,selflesnsess,selflessenss,selflessnes,selflessnness,selflessnses,selfllessness,selflsesness,sellfessness,sellflessness,sleflessness,sselflessness
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of selflessness - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “selflessness”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-E-L-F-L-E-S-S-N-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.