cottage pie

noun

"cottage-pie" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

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

Unranked
below top-frequency English
11
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A meat pie having a mashed potato crust covering a mixture of beef (typically minced) and vegetables.

Corpus desk

Index EN-cottage-pie · cottage pie · English

cottage pie · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 11 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 cottage pie
PropertyValue
Headwordcottage pie
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “cottage pie” in English

cottage pieranks 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

cottage pie is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A meat pie having a mashed potato crust covering a mixture of beef (typically minced) and vegetables.".

No generated misspelling entries exist for cottage pie in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This entry stands alone in our confusable 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 its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is cottage pie, spelled C-O-T-T-A-G-E- -P-I-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    A meat pie having a mashed potato crust covering a mixture of beef (typically minced) and vegetables.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Cottage Pie.— Mince any kind of cold meat together (beef, mutton, veal, pork, or lamb), put it about an inch or and inch and a half deep in a pie dish, and cover it with gravy; don't spare salt and pepper; cover it over with mashed potatoes smooth at the top, and cut it across in diamonds with a knife; bake till it is crisp and brown at the top.
  2. The recipes are of dishes suitable to the varying means of working men, such as cottage pie, haricot beans, scrap-bread pudding, Exeter stew, poor man's goose, and many others, combining economy and palatableness.

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 "cottage pie"?
"cottage pie" is spelled C-O-T-T-A-G-E- -P-I-E.
What does "cottage pie" mean?
As a noun, "cottage pie" means: A meat pie having a mashed potato crust covering a mixture of beef (typically minced) and vegetables.
What language does "cottage pie" come from?
"cottage pie" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list