shirking
"shirking" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shirking” is uncommon English (frequency #67,829 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #67,829
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The act of one who shirks.
Corpus desk
Index EN-shirking · shirking · English
shirking · rank #67,829 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #67,829
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH shitstorm
Nearest frequency peer: shitstorm (+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.
Long-tail ranks near “shirking”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- serous
serous
32,180 corpus weight
- Shepparton
Shepparton
32,174 corpus weight
- shirking
shirking
32,172 corpus weight
- shitstorm
shitstorm
32,171 corpus weight
- Shula
Shula
32,169 corpus weight
- Sklar
Sklar
32,165 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “shirking” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shirking |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #67,829 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “shirking” in English
Rare enough to double-check
shirking is uncommon English at frequency #67,829 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The act of one who shirks.".
shirking doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is shirking, spelled S-H-I-R-K-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The act of one who shirks.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how shirking appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
1906-1907, Mark Twain, Chapters from My Autobiography Autobiography […] inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth […]
Midler has never been called a feminist, but one cannot call her anything else better. Every move in her career appears to be one more shirking of categorization.
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 "shirking", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).