born with a silver spoon in one's mouth
"born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-one-s-mouth" is a 31-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“born with a silver spoon in one's mouth” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 39
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Born rich, or into a wealthy family.
Corpus desk
Index EN-born-with-a-silver-spoon · born with a silver spoon in one's mouth · English
born with a silver spoon in one's mouth · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 39 letters
- VOW-12 12 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" 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 | born with a silver spoon in one's mouth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 39 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “born with a silver spoon in one's mouth” in English
Rare enough to double-check
born with a silver spoon in one's mouth is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Born rich, or into a wealthy family.".
born with a silver spoon in one's mouth doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: * According to some, the original nautical expression is just born with a silver spoon and describes those young gentlemen who were able to enter the Royal Navy without examination and whose promotion was assured. The converse was born with a wooden ladle. … The correct English form is born with a silver spoon in one's mouth, spelled B-O-R-N- -W-I-T-H- -A- -S-I-L-V-E-R- -S-P-O-O-N- -I-N- -O-N-E-'-S- -M-O-U-T-H.
Definition
- 1Born rich, or into a wealthy family.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how born with a silver spoon in one's mouth appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Near-synonyms: born to the purple, to the manor born
He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and probably never had to work a day in his life.
Etymology
* According to some, the original nautical expression is just born with a silver spoon and describes those young gentlemen who were able to enter the Royal Navy without examination and whose promotion was assured. The converse was born with a wooden ladle. * However, the phrase is first recorded as a Scottish proverb in the form "Every Man is no born with a Silver Spoon in his Mouth" (1721).
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.