at first sight
"at-first-sight" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“at first sight” 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
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Superficially, without a full inspection.
Corpus desk
Index EN-at-first-sight · at first sight · English
at first sight · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "A" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | at first sight |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “at first sight” in English
Rare enough to double-check
at first sight is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Superficially, without a full inspection.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for at first sight in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is at first sight, spelled A-T- -F-I-R-S-T- -S-I-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1Superficially, without a full inspection.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how at first sight appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It looks like a normal car at first sight. But when we open the hood, we discover something quite new.
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.