tellingly
"tellingly" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tellingly” is uncommon English (frequency #75,480 among 3,151 “T” headwords), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #75,480
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - In a telling manner.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tellingly · tellingly · English
tellingly · rank #75,480 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #75,480
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH tempeh
Nearest frequency peer: tempeh (+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 “tellingly”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- telephonic
telephonic
24,525 corpus weight
- telephoning
telephoning
24,524 corpus weight
- teleporter
teleporter
24,523 corpus weight
- tellingly
tellingly
24,521 corpus weight
- tempeh
tempeh
24,520 corpus weight
- Tenby
Tenby
24,519 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “tellingly” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tellingly |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #75,480 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tellingly” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tellingly is uncommon English at frequency #75,480 among 3,151 “T” headwords, classed as anadverb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "In a telling manner.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tellingly, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: From telling + -ly. The correct English form is tellingly, spelled T-E-L-L-I-N-G-L-Y.
Definition
- 1In a telling manner.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tellingly appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It demanded taxes, which in a cashless society meant grain, cattle and, most tellingly, labor.
Most tellingly, the recipe from Causes and Cures prescribes a vinegared wine but the recipe from Physica prescribes vinegar or wine, yet when the explanation of how the medicine works is given, in both passages it has been assumed that the ingredient of the Causes and Cures’ version (vinegared wine) not that of Physica (vinegar or wine) was used.
Etymology
From telling + -ly.
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.
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "tellingly", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).