bowel movement

noun

"bowel-movement" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“bowel movement” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. 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) - The discharge of feces from the body, an act of defecation.

Corpus desk

Index EN-bowel-movement · bowel movement · English

bowel movement · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 14 letters
  • VOW-5 5 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.

Key facts for bowel movement
PropertyValue
Headwordbowel movement
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “bowel movement” in English

bowel movementsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

bowel movement is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for bowel movement, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is bowel movement, spelled B-O-W-E-L- -M-O-V-E-M-E-N-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    The discharge of feces from the body, an act of defecation.
  2. 2
    The feces thus produced.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how bowel movement appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Mid-March 2021, at a bowling alley, I watch balls thunder down lanes and wonder if I’ve had a bowel movement since Presidents’ Day.

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

How do you spell "bowel movement"?
"bowel movement" is spelled B-O-W-E-L- -M-O-V-E-M-E-N-T.
What does "bowel movement" mean?
As a noun, "bowel movement" means: The discharge of feces from the body, an act of defecation.
What language does "bowel movement" come from?
"bowel movement" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list