a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-in-the-bush
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
43 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-in-the-bush", 43-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-in-the-bush" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-in-the-bush" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush is aEnglishproverb. It means: A sure thing is preferable to the mere chance at something more.
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See how a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proverb |
| Letters | 43 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush is 43 letters long, classified as aproverb. 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: "A sure thing is preferable to the mere chance at something more.".
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of Latin plus valet in manibus avis unica quam dupla silvis (“a single bird in the hands is worth more than two in the forest”), possibly deriving from sources as old as the ancient Middle East, with the 6th century BCE Proverbs of Ahiqar including "… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, spelled A- -B-I-R-D- -I-N- -T-H-E- -H-A-N-D- -I-S- -W-O-R-T-H- -T-W-O- -I-N- -T-H-E- -B-U-S-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A sure thing is preferable to the mere chance at something more.
Etymology
Calque of Latin plus valet in manibus avis unica quam dupla silvis (“a single bird in the hands is worth more than two in the forest”), possibly deriving from sources as old as the ancient Middle East, with the 6th century BCE Proverbs of Ahiqar including "a sparrow in thy hand is better than a thousand sparrows flying".
This word in other languages
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: