bear down
"bear-down" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bear down” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bear, down.
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See how bear down compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bear down |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bear down” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bear down is 9 letters long, classified as a verb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for bear down in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English 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 English form is bear down, spelled B-E-A-R- -D-O-W-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bear, down.
- 2To steer away from the wind; to approach from windward.
- 3To push (someone) to the ground; to defeat, overcome.
- 4To maintain one's position against (someone) in a debate; to stand one's ground against.
- 5To intensify one's efforts.
- 6To approach in a determined manner.
- 7To exert downward pressure on one's abdomen, as in giving birth, forcing out feces, and some similar bodily maneuvers.
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, “bear down, English word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/en/word/bear-down
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Using “bear down”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-E-A-R- -D-O-W-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: