waker
"waker" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“waker” is uncommon English (frequency #75,546 among 12,113 “W” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #75,546
- frequency rank, English
- 12,113
- “W” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Watchful; vigilant; alert.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | waker |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #75,546 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “waker” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
waker is uncommon English at frequency #75,546 among 12,113 “W” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Watchful; vigilant; alert.".
waker doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English wakyr, from Old English wacor, waccor (“watchful, vigilant”), from Proto-West Germanic *wakr, from Proto-Germanic *wakraz (“awake, watchful”), equivalent to wake + -er. Cognate with Scots wakir (“watchful”), Dutch wakker (“awake”), Germa… The correct English form is waker, spelled W-A-K-E-R.
Definition
- 1Watchful; vigilant; alert.
Etymology
From Middle English wakyr, from Old English wacor, waccor (“watchful, vigilant”), from Proto-West Germanic *wakr, from Proto-Germanic *wakraz (“awake, watchful”), equivalent to wake + -er. Cognate with Scots wakir (“watchful”), Dutch wakker (“awake”), German wacker (“awake, alert, capable, brave”), Swedish vacker (“wakeful, watchful, fair, comely”). Also precisely cognate with Sanskrit वज्र (vájra, “adamantine”), both ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wóǵ-ros (“strong, lively”), and therefore a doublet of vajra. Further related through the same Indo-European root to vigil, vigor, and vegetable.
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 “waker”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is W-A-K-E-R - 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.