whittling
"whittling" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“whittling” is uncommon English (frequency #64,837 among 12,113 “W” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #64,837
- frequency rank, English
- 12,113
- “W” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A chip or shaving whittled from some larger substance.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | whittling |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #64,837 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “whittling” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
whittling is uncommon English at frequency #64,837 among 12,113 “W” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
whittling doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is whittling, spelled W-H-I-T-T-L-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1A chip or shaving whittled from some larger substance.
- 2The art of carving shapes out of raw wood using a knife.
- 3A process of repeatedly shaving slivers from a piece of wood (non-artistic).
- 4The reducing of something by degrees, especially at the expense of some effort.
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 “whittling”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is W-H-I-T-T-L-I-N-G - 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.