spikey
"spikey" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“spikey” is uncommon English (frequency #88,882 among 54,294 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #88,882
- frequency rank, English
- 54,294
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Alternative spelling of spiky.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spikey |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #88,882 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “spikey” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
spikey is uncommon English at frequency #88,882 among 54,294 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Alternative spelling of spiky.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for spikey, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is spikey, spelled S-P-I-K-E-Y.
Definition
- 1Alternative spelling of spiky.
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 "spikey"?
What does "spikey" mean?
What language does "spikey" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “spikey”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-P-I-K-E-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
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.