willful
"willful" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“willful” has 8 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #26,308. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #26,308
- frequency rank, English
- 1,759
- “W” headwords
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 4
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - American standard spelling of wilful.
Corpus desk
Index EN-willful · willful · English
willful · rank #26,308 · 8 variants · 4 confusables
- FREQ-MID #26,308
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 4 pairs
- VAR-MID 8 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,759
- PHOTO-FINISH whiting
Nearest frequency peer: whiting (-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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “willful”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- wearer
wearer
73,696 corpus weight
- webs
webs
73,695 corpus weight
- whiting
whiting
73,694 corpus weight
- willful
willful
73,693 corpus weight
- Woodley
Woodley
73,692 corpus weight
- Worcestersh…
Worcestershire
73,691 corpus weight
What this shows “willful” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | willful |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #26,308 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “willful”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 8 spelling variants around willful, anadjective. Corpus frequency is #26,308 among 1,759 “W” headwords. Dominant gloss: "American standard spelling of wilful.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for willful, with forms such as "iwllful", "wilflul", and "willfful". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 4 confusable-pair relationships, "wishful", "wistful", "willfully", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is willful, spelled W-I-L-L-F-U-L.
Definition
- 1American standard spelling of wilful.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how willful appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I may well say that a willfuler woman, and one more wedded unto her own opinion, without order, reason, and discretion, I never did know or heard of.
I hope you’ll excuse the liberty, but I’ve come to Detmold along with Herr Peters, the apothecary, in his pony chaise; and a willfuler-minded beast I never sat behind. A taste of the whip would do him good, and if he was mine he should have it.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- iwllful
- wilflul
- willfful
- willflu
- willfull
- willufl
- wlilful
- wwillful
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of willful - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 "willful", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (8 here; floor ≥5).