topsail
/ˈtɑp.seɪl/
"topsail" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“topsail” is uncommon English (frequency #77,286 among 3,151 “T” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #77,286
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A sail or either of the two sails rigged just above the course sail and supported by the topmast on a square-rigged sailing ship.
Corpus desk
Index EN-topsail · topsail · English
topsail · rank #77,286 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #77,286
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH tonally
Nearest frequency peer: tonally (-2 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 “topsail”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Tollywood
Tollywood
22,720 corpus weight
- Tomic
Tomic
22,719 corpus weight
- tonally
tonally
22,717 corpus weight
- topsail
topsail
22,715 corpus weight
- transexual
transexual
22,710 corpus weight
- transworld
transworld
22,709 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “topsail” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | topsail |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈtɑp.seɪl/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #77,286 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “topsail” in English
Rare enough to double-check
topsail is uncommon English at frequency #77,286 among 3,151 “T” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈtɑp.seɪl/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for topsail, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English topsail, topsayl, topseyle, topsaill, equivalent to top + sail. The correct English form is topsail, spelled T-O-P-S-A-I-L.
Definition
- 1A sail or either of the two sails rigged just above the course sail and supported by the topmast on a square-rigged sailing ship.
- 2In a fore-and-aft-rigged sailing boat, the sail that is set above the gaff at the top part of the mast.
Etymology
From Middle English topsail, topsayl, topseyle, topsaill, equivalent to top + sail.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "topsail", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).