shearling
"shearling" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shearling” is uncommon English (frequency #83,740 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #83,740
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A sheep that has been shorn for the first time
Corpus desk
Index EN-shearling · shearling · English
shearling · rank #83,740 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #83,740
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH shallowly
Nearest frequency peer: shallowly (-1 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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “shearling”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- senhor
senhor
16,266 corpus weight
- shallowly
shallowly
16,262 corpus weight
- shearling
shearling
16,261 corpus weight
- Sheetz
Sheetz
16,260 corpus weight
- shero
shero
16,256 corpus weight
- sherriff
sherriff
16,255 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “shearling” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shearling |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #83,740 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “shearling” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
shearling is uncommon English at frequency #83,740 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
shearling doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English scherling; equivalent to shear + -ling. The correct English form is shearling, spelled S-H-E-A-R-L-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1A sheep that has been shorn for the first time
- 2A sheepskin or lambskin that has gone through a limited shearing process so that the fibers are of uniform depth
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how shearling appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
They are rarely fattened when shearlings, the usual period being after they have lost their second fleece, and are wethers.
Her coat was lined with shearling.
Etymology
From Middle English scherling; equivalent to shear + -ling.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "shearling", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
What to do next
You've looked up "shearling". Here's where to go from here.
- Usage frequency rank #83,740 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more English words in the "S" letter cohort. S–Z browse
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PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.