age-old
"age-old" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“age-old” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as an adjective - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Very old; having existed for a long time; ancient or well-established.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | age-old |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “age-old” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for age-old is 7 letters long, classified as an adjective. 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: "Very old; having existed for a long time; ancient or well-established.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for age-old, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is age-old, spelled A-G-E---O-L-D.
Definition
- 1Very old; having existed for a long time; ancient or well-established.
Synonyms
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “age-old”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-G-E---O-L-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.