war crime
/ˈwɔː kɹaɪm/
"war-crime" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“war crime” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A punishable offence under international law for violations of the laws of war by any person or persons, military or civilian.
Corpus desk
Index EN-war-crime · war crime · English
war crime · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "W" 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 | war crime |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈwɔː kɹaɪm/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “war crime” in English
Rare enough to double-check
war crime is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈwɔː kɹaɪm/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A punishable offence under international law for violations of the laws of war by any person or persons, military or civilian.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for war crime, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From war + crime. The correct English form is war crime, spelled W-A-R- -C-R-I-M-E.
Definition
- 1A punishable offence under international law for violations of the laws of war by any person or persons, military or civilian.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how war crime appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[W]ar crimes are such hostile or other acts of soldiers or other individuals as may be punished by the enemy on capture of the offenders. […] [A]lthough among the acts called war crimes are many which, such as abuse of a flag of truce or assassination of enemy soldiers for instance, are crimes in the moral sense of the term, there are others which, such a…
[Paragraph] 441. The term "War Crime" is the technical expression for such an act of enemy soldiers and enemy civilians as may be visited by punishment or capture of the offenders. […] [Paragraph] 442. War crimes may be divided into four different classes:– (i) Violations of the recognized rules of warfare by members of the armed forces. (ii) Illegitimate…
Etymology
From war + crime.
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.