on the fritz
The verdict
“on the fritz” is outside the top-ranked German vocabulary, used as a phrase - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 12
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: US-amerikanisch nicht oder nicht richtig funktionstüchtig
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | on the fritz |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| IPA | [ɑn ðə frɪts] |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “on the fritz” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for on the fritz is 12 letters long, classified as a phrase, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ɑn ðə frɪts]. 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: "US-amerikanisch nicht oder nicht richtig funktionstüchtig".
No misspelling variants are generated for on the fritz in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable German 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 German form is on the fritz, spelled O-N- -T-H-E- -F-R-I-T-Z, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1US-amerikanisch nicht oder nicht richtig funktionstüchtig
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, “on the fritz, German word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/de/wort/on-the-fritz
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Using “on the fritz”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is O-N- -T-H-E- -F-R-I-T-Z - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ɑn ðə frɪts] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
Nearby German words
Other entries that begin with the letter O in our German index: