birds-of-a-feather-flock-together
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Detailed reference entry for the English word "birds-of-a-feather-flock-together", 33-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "birds-of-a-feather-flock-together" 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 "birds-of-a-feather-flock-together" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
The verdict
“birds of a feather flock together” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a proverb — the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 33
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: People of similar character, background or taste tend to congregate or associate with one another; it is easier to establish friendships with people that one has a lot in common with.
Compare similar words
See how birds of a feather flock together compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | birds of a feather flock together |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proverb |
| Letters | 33 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “birds of a feather flock together” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for birds of a feather flock together is 33 letters long, classified as a proverb. 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: "People of similar character, background or taste tend to congregate or associate with one another; it is easier to establish friendships with people that one has a lot in common with.".
No misspelling variants are generated for birds of a feather flock together 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.
Etymologically, the entry records: The expression appears to have surfaced in the 16th century, allegedly a literal translation of Plato's Republic. In 1545, William Turner wrote a version of the expression in the Rescuing of Romish Fox: "Byrdes of on kynde and color flok and flye allwayes t… 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 birds of a feather flock together, spelled B-I-R-D-S- -O-F- -A- -F-E-A-T-H-E-R- -F-L-O-C-K- -T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1People of similar character, background or taste tend to congregate or associate with one another; it is easier to establish friendships with people that one has a lot in common with.
Etymology
The expression appears to have surfaced in the 16th century, allegedly a literal translation of Plato's Republic. In 1545, William Turner wrote a version of the expression in the Rescuing of Romish Fox: "Byrdes of on kynde and color flok and flye allwayes together." One can, however, also compare the expression to Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 27:9: "Birds resort unto their like."
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “birds of a feather flock together”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-I-R-D-S- -O-F- -A- -F-E-A-T-H-E-R- -F-L-O-C-K- -T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R — 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: