by a whisker
"by-a-whisker" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“by a whisker” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a prep_phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - By a very small distance.
Corpus desk
Index EN-by-a-whisker · by a whisker · English
by a whisker · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 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 | by a whisker |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “by a whisker” in English
Rare enough to double-check
by a whisker is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "By a very small distance.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for by a whisker, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, 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 by a whisker, spelled B-Y- -A- -W-H-I-S-K-E-R.
Definition
- 1By a very small distance.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how by a whisker appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I'm lucky to be alive. The bus missed me by a whisker.
Her communitarian platform Barcelona en Comú won by a whisker, and there was an initial period of transition from Colau the activist who fought the police to Colau the mayor who was responsible for them.
Synonyms
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.