undernourished
"undernourished" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“undernourished” is uncommon English (frequency #67,924 among 23,789 “U” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #67,924
- frequency rank, English
- 23,789
- “U” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Provided with insufficient nourishment to sustain proper health and growth.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | undernourished |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 14 |
| Frequency rank | #67,924 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “undernourished” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
undernourished is uncommon English at frequency #67,924 among 23,789 “U” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Provided with insufficient nourishment to sustain proper health and growth.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for undernourished, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From under- + nourished. The correct English form is undernourished, spelled U-N-D-E-R-N-O-U-R-I-S-H-E-D.
Definition
- 1Provided with insufficient nourishment to sustain proper health and growth.
Etymology
From under- + nourished.
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
How do you spell "undernourished"?
What does "undernourished" mean?
What is the origin of the word "undernourished"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “undernourished”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is U-N-D-E-R-N-O-U-R-I-S-H-E-D - 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.