Smalltalk
"smalltalk" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Smalltalk” is uncommon English (frequency #69,449 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a proper noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #69,449
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An object-oriented, dynamically-typed, reflective programming language.
Corpus desk
Index EN-smalltalk · Smalltalk · English
Smalltalk · rank #69,449 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #69,449
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH sleepwear
Nearest frequency peer: sleepwear (-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 “Smalltalk”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- shoji
shoji
30,556 corpus weight
- Shuttleworth
Shuttleworth
30,555 corpus weight
- shying
shying
30,554 corpus weight
- sleepwear
sleepwear
30,553 corpus weight
- Smalltalk
Smalltalk
30,552 corpus weight
- soldado
soldado
30,548 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “Smalltalk” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Smalltalk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #69,449 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “Smalltalk” in English
Rare enough to double-check
Smalltalk is uncommon English at frequency #69,449 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as aproper noun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "An object-oriented, dynamically-typed, reflective programming language.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for Smalltalk, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: From small talk; according to Alan Kay (one of its creators): The name actually appeared before the first Smalltalk design, which was done in 1971. I had mentioned to someone that the "prose" of then current programming languages was lower than a cocktail p… The correct English form is Smalltalk, spelled S-M-A-L-L-T-A-L-K.
Definition
- 1An object-oriented, dynamically-typed, reflective programming language.
Etymology
From small talk; according to Alan Kay (one of its creators): The name actually appeared before the first Smalltalk design, which was done in 1971. I had mentioned to someone that the "prose" of then current programming languages was lower than a cocktail party conversation, and that great progress would have been made if we could even get to the level of making "smalltalk". It then occured^([sic]) to me that this word was also a great pun for a language aimed at the world of small children. As for hype: Another motive for "smalltalk" was the practice at the time of naming operating, and other, systems (which hardly did anything) after mighty indo-european gods, such as Thor, Zeus, Odin, etc. I figured that if Smalltalk ever did something neat, then people would be pleasantly surprised.
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.
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "Smalltalk", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).