wind shear
"wind-shear" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“wind shear” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Variation in wind speed or direction over a short spatial distance.
Corpus desk
Index EN-wind-shear · wind shear · English
wind shear · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 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 | wind shear |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “wind shear” in English
Rare enough to double-check
wind shear is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for wind shear, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is wind shear, spelled W-I-N-D- -S-H-E-A-R.
Definition
- 1Variation in wind speed or direction over a short spatial distance.
- 2A specific instance of variation in wind speed or direction over a short spatial distance.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how wind shear appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Wind shear from a microburst, as compared to wind shear resulting from a gust front, is particularly hazardous because it is a short-period event which creates very strong wind gusts with a large variation in direction over a very short distance (1/2 to 2 1/2 miles in diameter).
The first effect of a wind shear was detected at 34 to 42 seconds into the takeoff, at a speed of about 115 KIAS with the airplane about 3,800 feet down the runway. An average shear rate of about 2.5 knots per second resulted in an interruption in acceleration at this point with the airspeed remaining at 115 to 120 KIAS for 7 to 10 seconds.
Synonyms
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.