tellingly
"tellingly" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tellingly” is uncommon English (frequency #75,480 among 27,828 “T” headwords), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #75,480
- frequency rank, English
- 27,828
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - In a telling manner.
| 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) |
Where “tellingly” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
tellingly is uncommon English at frequency #75,480 among 27,828 “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.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “tellingly”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-E-L-L-I-N-G-L-Y - 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.