stop-start
"stop-start" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stop-start” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Intermittent; starting and stopping with regularity.
Corpus desk
Index EN-stop-start · stop-start · English
stop-start · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-2 2 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 | stop-start |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “stop-start” in English
Rare enough to double-check
stop-start is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Intermittent; starting and stopping with regularity.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for stop-start, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is stop-start, spelled S-T-O-P---S-T-A-R-T.
Definition
- 1Intermittent; starting and stopping with regularity.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how stop-start appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It was Van Persie's only opportunity during a stop-start match in which Theo Walcott, Gervinho and Aaron Ramsey squandered chances to open the scoring.
Health, a quartet from Los Angeles, is another story, playing manic, stop-start spasms of percussion and screamy noise, with three of its members throwing their bodies around as if in an untamed dance.
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.