tautological
"tautological" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tautological” is uncommon English (frequency #93,219 among 27,828 “T” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #93,219
- frequency rank, English
- 27,828
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Of, relating to, or using tautology.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tautological |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #93,219 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tautological” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
tautological is uncommon English at frequency #93,219 among 27,828 “T” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for tautological, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From tautology + -ical. The correct English form is tautological, spelled T-A-U-T-O-L-O-G-I-C-A-L.
Definition
- 1Of, relating to, or using tautology.
- 2Using repetition or excessive wordiness; pleonastic or circumlocutionary.
Etymology
From tautology + -ical.
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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Using “tautological”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-A-U-T-O-L-O-G-I-C-A-L - 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.