sonority
/səˈnɑɹɪti/
"sonority" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sonority” is uncommon English (frequency #98,741 among 6,566 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #98,741
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The property of being sonorous.
Corpus desk
Index EN-sonority · sonority · English
sonority · rank #98,741 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #98,741
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH Soloway
Nearest frequency peer: Soloway (-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 “sonority”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Soja
Soja
1,263 corpus weight
- Sokal
Sokal
1,262 corpus weight
- Soloway
Soloway
1,261 corpus weight
- sonority
sonority
1,260 corpus weight
- souq
souq
1,259 corpus weight
- spherically
spherically
1,257 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “sonority” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sonority |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /səˈnɑɹɪti/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #98,741 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “sonority” in English
Rare enough to double-check
sonority is uncommon English at frequency #98,741 among 6,566 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /səˈnɑɹɪti/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for sonority, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. 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 sonor(ous) + -ity, from French sonorité, from Latin sonōritās. The correct English form is sonority, spelled S-O-N-O-R-I-T-Y.
Definition
- 1The property of being sonorous.
- 2Relative loudness (of a speech sound); degree of being sonorous.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sonority appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Another quality that bothers me is Brendel's inconsistent sonority. The treble is hard and pingy; the midrange is weighed down with a booming bass.
It can be seen that vowels have the highest sonority of all phonemes in English, with low vowels being even more sonorous than high vowels.
Etymology
From sonor(ous) + -ity, from French sonorité, from Latin sonōritās.
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 "sonority", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).