brick and mortar
"brick-and-mortar" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“brick and mortar” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Buildings and property for the conduct of business, particularly in the sale of retail goods to the general public. (Used to contrast an Internet-based sales operation that lacks customer-oriented ...
Corpus desk
Index EN-brick-and-mortar · brick and mortar · English
brick and mortar · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | brick and mortar |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “brick and mortar” in English
Rare enough to double-check
brick and mortar is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Buildings and property for the conduct of business, particularly in the sale of retail goods to the general public. (Used to contrast an Internet-based sales operation that lacks customer-oriented ...".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for brick and mortar, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is brick and mortar, spelled B-R-I-C-K- -A-N-D- -M-O-R-T-A-R.
Definition
- 1Buildings and property for the conduct of business, particularly in the sale of retail goods to the general public. (Used to contrast an Internet-based sales operation that lacks customer-oriented store fronts and a "traditional" one for which most capital investment might be in the building infrastructure.)
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how brick and mortar appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Brick and mortar retail stores face online competition.
E-commerce is not the kiss of death for big, traditional brick-and-mortar business.
Synonyms
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.