can-of-worms
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
12 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "can-of-worms", 12-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "can-of-worms" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "can-of-worms" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
can of worms is aEnglishnoun. It means: A complex, troublesome situation arising when a decision or action produces considerable subsequent problems.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | can of worms |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for can of worms is 12 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for can of worms in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is can of worms, spelled C-A-N- -O-F- -W-O-R-M-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A complex, troublesome situation arising when a decision or action produces considerable subsequent problems.
- 2A troublesome situation; an issue whose resolution is difficult or contentious but not necessarily complex.
- 3Any difficult or disgusting task, activity, topic of discussion or subject matter, which would be ideally avoided if at all possible.
- 4Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see can, worm.
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: