smugness
"smugness" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“smugness” is uncommon English (frequency #66,302 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #66,302
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The state or quality of being smug.
Corpus desk
Index EN-smugness · smugness · English
smugness · rank #66,302 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #66,302
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH sorel
Nearest frequency peer: sorel (+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 “smugness”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Skegness
Skegness
33,703 corpus weight
- slava
slava
33,701 corpus weight
- smugness
smugness
33,699 corpus weight
- sorel
sorel
33,698 corpus weight
- spectrograph
spectrograph
33,697 corpus weight
- spindly
spindly
33,696 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “smugness” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | smugness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #66,302 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “smugness” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
smugness is uncommon English at frequency #66,302 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for smugness, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From smug + -ness. The correct English form is smugness, spelled S-M-U-G-N-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1The state or quality of being smug.
- 2The result or product of being smug.
Etymology
From smug + -ness.
This word in other languages
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 "smugness", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
What to do next
You've looked up "smugness". Here's where to go from here.
- Usage frequency rank #66,302 among English headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more English words in the "S" letter cohort. S–Z browse
- PlainSpell rotates a curated Word of the Day from the English corpus, a passive way to discover vocabulary. Word of the Day
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.