clean as a hound's tooth
"clean-as-a-hound-s-tooth" is a 19-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“clean as a hound's tooth” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 24
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Very clean.
Corpus desk
Index EN-clean-as-a-hound-s-tooth · clean as a hound's tooth · English
clean as a hound's tooth · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 24 letters
- VOW-8 8 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | clean as a hound's tooth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 24 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “clean as a hound's tooth” in English
Rare enough to double-check
clean as a hound's tooth is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for clean as a hound's tooth, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is clean as a hound's tooth, spelled C-L-E-A-N- -A-S- -A- -H-O-U-N-D-'-S- -T-O-O-T-H.
Definition
- 1Very clean.
- 2Very innocent.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how clean as a hound's tooth appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Rogers left the Department of State in September, 1973, before the Watergate scandal had implicated Nixon and some of his principal White House aides. He couldn't have picked a better time to return to private life and all his friends were happy for him. Bill Rogers simply cleaned his desk and moved back to his old law firm, Rogers and Wells. He came thro…
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.