sound law
/ˈsaʊnd lɔː/
"sound-law" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sound law” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A rule that describes historical sound change (the change in pronunciation of a given sound or cluster of sounds) in the development of a language.
Corpus desk
Index EN-sound-law · sound law · English
sound law · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sound law |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsaʊnd lɔː/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “sound law” in English
Rare enough to double-check
sound law is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈsaʊnd lɔː/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A rule that describes historical sound change (the change in pronunciation of a given sound or cluster of sounds) in the development of a language.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for sound law, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of German Lautgesetz. The correct English form is sound law, spelled S-O-U-N-D- -L-A-W.
Definition
- 1A rule that describes historical sound change (the change in pronunciation of a given sound or cluster of sounds) in the development of a language.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sound law appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Then, to oversimplify, if there are similarities in sound and meaning between two words that do not obey the sound laws that have been established, we conclude that they have resulted from borrowing.
In conclusion, we present the sound laws of Old Icelandic in the chronological order which represents the results of this dissertation.
Etymology
Calque of German Lautgesetz.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.