mea culpa
[ˈmea ˈkulpa]
The verdict
“mea culpa” is outside the top-ranked Spanish vocabulary, used as a phrase - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency Spanish
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Discurso que se da para admitir el haber cometido un error, pidiendo disculpa por ello.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mea culpa |
| Language | Spanish |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| IPA | [ˈmea ˈkulpa] |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mea culpa” sits in Spanish frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Spanish entry for mea culpa is 9 letters long, classified as a phrase, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ˈmea ˈkulpa]. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Discurso que se da para admitir el haber cometido un error, pidiendo disculpa por ello.".
No misspelling variants are generated for mea culpa in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable Spanish patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct Spanish form is mea culpa, spelled M-E-A- -C-U-L-P-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Discurso que se da para admitir el haber cometido un error, pidiendo disculpa por ello.
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “mea culpa, Spanish word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/es/palabra/mea-culpa
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Using “mea culpa”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Spanish spelling is M-E-A- -C-U-L-P-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ˈmea ˈkulpa] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more Spanish words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Spanish words
Nearby Spanish words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our Spanish index: