tansy
/ˈtanzi/
"tansy" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tansy” is uncommon English (frequency #78,187 among 3,151 “T” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #78,187
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A herbaceous plant with yellow flowers, of the genus Tanacetum, especially Tanacetum vulgare.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tansy · tansy · English
tansy · rank #78,187 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #78,187
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH tannic
Nearest frequency peer: tannic (-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 “tansy”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- tabla
tabla
21,817 corpus weight
- Tammi
Tammi
21,816 corpus weight
- tannic
tannic
21,815 corpus weight
- tansy
tansy
21,814 corpus weight
- tearoom
tearoom
21,813 corpus weight
- Teena
Teena
21,812 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “tansy” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tansy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈtanzi/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #78,187 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tansy” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tansy is uncommon English at frequency #78,187 among 3,151 “T” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈtanzi/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for tansy in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English tansy, tansey, syncopic forms of earlier tanesie, tanesei, from Old French tanesie, tanoisie, tanasie, tanaisie, from Medieval Latin tanacetum, atanacetum, attested since the 8th century, of obscure origin, speculated from Anci… The correct English form is tansy, spelled T-A-N-S-Y.
Definition
- 1A herbaceous plant with yellow flowers, of the genus Tanacetum, especially Tanacetum vulgare.
- 2A dish common in the seventeenth century, made of eggs, sugar, rose water, cream, and the juice of herbs (including tansy), baked with butter in a shallow dish. "Originally flavoured with tansy, but by Pepys's time generally having spinach as its predominant flavouring."
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tansy appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The sunny afternoon was there, like another land. By the path grew tansy and little trees.
Various measures were taken to avoid it, most popular being the suspension of certain herbs and tree branches over the doorways of dwellings and stables. Commonly used greenery were tansy, honesty, garlic, St. John's Wort, mountain ash, roadside verbena.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English tansy, tansey, syncopic forms of earlier tanesie, tanesei, from Old French tanesie, tanoisie, tanasie, tanaisie, from Medieval Latin tanacetum, atanacetum, attested since the 8th century, of obscure origin, speculated from Ancient Greek ἀθανασία (athanasía, “immortality”) owing to hallucinations from the thujone in the plant, else from taenia (“tapeworm”) due to its primary use against parasites by which reason it is called in Arabic حَشِيشَة الدُود (ḥašīša ad-dūd, literally “worm herb”), otherwise a Berber borrowing like tagetes.
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); 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 "tansy", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).