water sickness
"water-sickness" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“water sickness” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Dropsy.
Corpus desk
Index EN-water-sickness · water sickness · English
water sickness · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | water sickness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “water sickness” in English
Rare enough to double-check
water sickness is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Dropsy.".
water sickness doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. 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 watersiknesse, wæterseocnesse, from Old English wætersēocnes (“dropsy”), equivalent to water + sickness. The correct English form is water sickness, spelled W-A-T-E-R- -S-I-C-K-N-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Dropsy.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how water sickness appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Water sickness, or general dropsy, also frequently takes place among sheep.
For water sickness (dropsy), or stones in the bladder, the cure was elder (sambucus, B.P.), for which also it is claimed “all things which are generated on a man's body to loathe, it thoroughly will heal.”
Etymology
From Middle English watersiknesse, wæterseocnesse, from Old English wætersēocnes (“dropsy”), equivalent to water + sickness.
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.