winless
"winless" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“winless” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #40,087 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #40,087
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Having never won; without a win; unsuccessful.
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 | winless |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #40,087 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “winless” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for winless is 7 letters long, classified as an adjective. Corpus data places it at rank #40,087 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Having never won; without a win; unsuccessful.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for winless, with forms such as "iwnless", "wilness", and "winelss". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 5 confusable-pair relationships, "witness", "winters", "wireless", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From win + -less. The correct English form is winless, spelled W-I-N-L-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1Having never won; without a win; unsuccessful.
Etymology
From win + -less.
Antonyms
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: iwnless,wilness,winelss,winles,winlless,winlses,winnless,wniless,wwinless
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of winless - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “winless”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is W-I-N-L-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “witness” - see the side-by-side comparison. winless vs witness
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.