tempering
"tempering" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tempering” is uncommon English (frequency #52,040 among 27,828 “T” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #52,040
- frequency rank, English
- 27,828
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The act by which something is tempered.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tempering |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #52,040 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tempering” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
tempering is uncommon English at frequency #52,040 among 27,828 “T” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tempering, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is tempering, spelled T-E-M-P-E-R-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The act by which something is tempered.
- 2A non-plastic material, such as sand, added to clay to prevent shrinkage and cracking during drying or firing; temper.
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 “tempering”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-E-M-P-E-R-I-N-G - 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.