unlawful
"unlawful" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“unlawful” has 12 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #10,960. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #10,960
- frequency rank, English
- 1,433
- “U” headwords
- 12
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Prohibited; not permitted by law (either civil or criminal law; see illegal)
Corpus desk
Index EN-unlawful · unlawful · English
unlawful · rank #10,960 · 12 variants · 1 confusable
- FREQ-MID #10,960
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-LOW 1 pairs
- VAR-MID 12 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,433
- PHOTO-FINISH unhealthy
Nearest frequency peer: unhealthy (-1 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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “unlawful”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- undertaking
undertaking
89,044 corpus weight
- unfinished
unfinished
89,043 corpus weight
- unhealthy
unhealthy
89,042 corpus weight
- unlawful
unlawful
89,041 corpus weight
- unpopular
unpopular
89,040 corpus weight
- UT
UT
89,039 corpus weight
What this shows “unlawful” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | unlawful |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #10,960 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “unlawful”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 12 spelling variants around unlawful, anadjective. Corpus frequency is #10,960 among 1,433 “U” headwords. Dominant gloss: "Prohibited; not permitted by law (either civil or criminal law; see illegal)".
Our generated misspelling index lists 12 likely wrong-spelling variants for unlawful, with forms such as "nulawful", "ulnawful", and "unalwful". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "unlawfully", a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English unlawful; equivalent to un- + lawful. The correct English form is unlawful, spelled U-N-L-A-W-F-U-L.
Definition
- 1Prohibited; not permitted by law (either civil or criminal law; see illegal)
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how unlawful appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He was charged with unlawful use of a car.
That year a U.S. appeals court found the program Snowden had exposed was unlawful and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
Etymology
From Middle English unlawful; equivalent to un- + lawful.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- nulawful
- ulnawful
- unalwful
- unlafwul
- unlawfful
- unlawflu
- unlawfull
- unlawufl
- unlawwful
- unllawful
- unlwaful
- unnlawful
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of unlawful - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "unlawful", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (12 here; floor ≥5).