cost of living
"cost-of-living" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cost of living” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The average cost of a standard set of basic necessities of life, especially of food, shelter and clothing.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cost-of-living · cost of living · English
cost of living · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | cost of living |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cost of living” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
cost of living is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The average cost of a standard set of basic necessities of life, especially of food, shelter and clothing.".
cost of living doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is cost of living, spelled C-O-S-T- -O-F- -L-I-V-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1The average cost of a standard set of basic necessities of life, especially of food, shelter and clothing.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
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Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.