chimney-sweep

noun

"chimney-sweep" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“chimney-sweep” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Archaic form of chimney sweep.

Corpus desk

Index EN-chimney-sweep · chimney-sweep · English

chimney-sweep · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 13 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "C" 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 chimney-sweep
PropertyValue
Headwordchimney-sweep
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “chimney-sweep” in English

chimney-sweepranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

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

Rare enough to double-check

chimney-sweep is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Archaic form of chimney sweep.".

No generated misspelling entries exist for chimney-sweep in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, 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 chimney-sweep, spelled C-H-I-M-N-E-Y---S-W-E-E-P.

Definition

  1. 1
    Archaic form of chimney sweep.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. […] he came home to find […] honest Swartz in her favourite amber-coloured satin, with turquoise-bracelets, countless rings, flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May day.
  2. The Cleansers—such as scavengers, nightmen, flushermen, chimney-sweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, “street-orderlies,” labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts.

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 "chimney-sweep"?
"chimney-sweep" is spelled C-H-I-M-N-E-Y---S-W-E-E-P.
What does "chimney-sweep" mean?
As a noun, "chimney-sweep" means: Archaic form of chimney sweep.
What language does "chimney-sweep" come from?
"chimney-sweep" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
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Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list