xylophone
/ˈzaɪ.ləˌfəʊn/
"xylophone" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“xylophone” is uncommon English (frequency #61,918 among 1,183 “X” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #61,918
- frequency rank, English
- 1,183
- “X” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Any musical instrument (percussion idiophone) made of wooden slats graduated so as to make the sounds of the scale when struck with a small drumstick-like mallet; the standard Western concert xylop...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | xylophone |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈzaɪ.ləˌfəʊn/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #61,918 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “xylophone” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
xylophone is uncommon English at frequency #61,918 among 1,183 “X” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈzaɪ.ləˌfəʊn/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Any musical instrument (percussion idiophone) made of wooden slats graduated so as to make the sounds of the scale when struck with a small drumstick-like mallet; the standard Western concert xylop...".
xylophone doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From xylo- (“of wood”) + -phone (“sound”). The correct English form is xylophone, spelled X-Y-L-O-P-H-O-N-E.
Definition
- 1Any musical instrument (percussion idiophone) made of wooden slats graduated so as to make the sounds of the scale when struck with a small drumstick-like mallet; the standard Western concert xylophone or one of its derivatives.
Etymology
From xylo- (“of wood”) + -phone (“sound”).
This word in other languages
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 “xylophone”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is X-Y-L-O-P-H-O-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈzaɪ.ləˌfəʊn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- 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.