shapewear

noun

"shapewear" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“shapewear” is uncommon English (frequency #88,841 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#88,841
frequency rank, English
6,566
“S” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Foundation garments, designed to hold a part of the body in a particular form.

Corpus desk

Index EN-shapewear · shapewear · English

shapewear · rank #88,841 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #88,841
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,566
  • PHOTO-FINISH severest

Nearest frequency peer: severest (-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 “shapewear”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “shapewear” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for shapewear
PropertyValue
Headwordshapewear
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters9
Frequency rank#88,841
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “shapewear” in English

Word frequency stretches from the small set of words we reach for constantly (left) out to the long tail barely used once in a while (right).shapewearfalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Scale is logarithmic (each tick is 10× rarer). Rare peers in the same band: “severest” (#88,839), “sharer” (#88,843), “sheerness” (#88,844). Among 6,566 “S” headwords, “shapewear” is #88,841. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

shapewear is uncommon English at frequency #88,841 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Foundation garments, designed to hold a part of the body in a particular form.".

shapewear doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

Etymologically, the entry records: From shape + -wear. The correct English form is shapewear, spelled S-H-A-P-E-W-E-A-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    Foundation garments, designed to hold a part of the body in a particular form.

Etymology

From shape + -wear.

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

How do you spell "shapewear"?
"shapewear" is spelled S-H-A-P-E-W-E-A-R.
What does "shapewear" mean?
As a noun, "shapewear" means: Foundation garments, designed to hold a part of the body in a particular form.
What is the origin of the word "shapewear"?
From shape + -wear. See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "shapewear", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list