at best
"at-best" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“at best” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a prep_phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - In the most favorable of conditions, especially in a situation that is otherwise negative.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | at best |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “at best” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
at best is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "In the most favorable of conditions, especially in a situation that is otherwise negative.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for at best, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, 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. The correct English form is at best, spelled A-T- -B-E-S-T.
Definition
- 1In the most favorable of conditions, especially in a situation that is otherwise negative.
Antonyms
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “at best”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is A-T- -B-E-S-T - 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.