smallish
"smallish" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“smallish” is uncommon English (frequency #51,400 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #51,400
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Somewhat small.
Corpus desk
Index EN-smallish · smallish · English
smallish · rank #51,400 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #51,400
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH slither
Nearest frequency peer: slither (-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 “smallish”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- simian
simian
48,608 corpus weight
- Simran
Simran
48,607 corpus weight
- slither
slither
48,602 corpus weight
- smallish
smallish
48,601 corpus weight
- snobbery
snobbery
48,598 corpus weight
- Sorenson
Sorenson
48,597 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “smallish” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | smallish |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #51,400 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “smallish” in English
Rare enough to double-check
smallish is uncommon English at frequency #51,400 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Somewhat small.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for smallish, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English smalish, equivalent to small + -ish. The correct English form is smallish, spelled S-M-A-L-L-I-S-H.
Definition
- 1Somewhat small.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how smallish appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Quite a few minutes would be spun out, for instance, at the smallish town of Chirk, but to me the dalliance was generally worthwhile, except in wet weather, because of the increasing beauty of the wooded hill scenery thereabouts.
Etymology
From Middle English smalish, equivalent to small + -ish.
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 "smallish"?
What does "smallish" mean?
What is the origin of the word "smallish"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "smallish", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).