breaking and entering
"breaking-and-entering" is a 19-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“breaking and entering” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 21
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The crime of gaining unauthorized entry into another's property, usually by breaking part of a building (a lock, door, window, etc.)
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | breaking and entering |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 21 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “breaking and entering” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for breaking and entering is 21 letters long, classified as a noun. 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: "The crime of gaining unauthorized entry into another's property, usually by breaking part of a building (a lock, door, window, etc.)".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for breaking and entering, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is breaking and entering, spelled B-R-E-A-K-I-N-G- -A-N-D- -E-N-T-E-R-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The crime of gaining unauthorized entry into another's property, usually by breaking part of a building (a lock, door, window, etc.)
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
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Using “breaking and entering”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-R-E-A-K-I-N-G- -A-N-D- -E-N-T-E-R-I-N-G - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.