stave off
"stave-off" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stave off” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stave off |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stave off” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stave off is 9 letters long, classified as a verb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "To prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for stave off, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented 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 stave off, spelled S-T-A-V-E- -O-F-F.
Definition
- 1To prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “stave off”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-A-V-E- -O-F-F - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.