tonsure
/ˈtɒn.ʃə(ɹ)/
"tonsure" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tonsure” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To shave the crown of the head of (a person) as a sign of humility and religious vocation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tonsure · tonsure · English
tonsure · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tonsure |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈtɒn.ʃə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tonsure” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tonsure is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed /ˈtɒn.ʃə(ɹ)/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To shave the crown of the head of (a person) as a sign of humility and religious vocation.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tonsure, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English tonsure, from Anglo-Norman and Old French tonsure, from Latin tonsūra (“a clipping, trimming”), from tondeō (“shear, clip, trim”). The correct English form is tonsure, spelled T-O-N-S-U-R-E.
Definition
- 1To shave the crown of the head of (a person) as a sign of humility and religious vocation.
Etymology
From Middle English tonsure, from Anglo-Norman and Old French tonsure, from Latin tonsūra (“a clipping, trimming”), from tondeō (“shear, clip, trim”).
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.