whittling
"whittling" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“whittling” is uncommon English (frequency #64,837 among 1,759 “W” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #64,837
- frequency rank, English
- 1,759
- “W” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A chip or shaving whittled from some larger substance.
Corpus desk
Index EN-whittling · whittling · English
whittling · rank #64,837 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #64,837
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,759
- PHOTO-FINISH Whittingham
Nearest frequency peer: Whittingham (-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.
Long-tail ranks near “whittling”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Weiser
Weiser
35,168 corpus weight
- wew
wew
35,167 corpus weight
- Whittingham
Whittingham
35,165 corpus weight
- whittling
whittling
35,164 corpus weight
- witchy
witchy
35,163 corpus weight
- Wooten
Wooten
35,161 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “whittling” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| 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) |
Long-tail rank of “whittling” in English
Rare enough to double-check
whittling is uncommon English at frequency #64,837 among 1,759 “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.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how whittling appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
a whittling down
Result: nothing would prevent the rapid destruction of the Deco District. Already the developers are calling for a whittling down of the original square mile to a few blocks. The few blocks will no doubt be whittled down to one building, and in the end all that will be left will be a Deco mailbox well pissed on by the local dogs. In another era it was cal…
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 "whittling", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).