crack down
/kɹæk ˈdaʊn/
"crack-down" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“crack down” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To take harsh action (against), as when enforcing a law more stringently than before.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | crack down |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /kɹæk ˈdaʊn/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “crack down” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
crack down is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed /kɹæk ˈdaʊn/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To take harsh action (against), as when enforcing a law more stringently than before.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for crack down, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, 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 crack down, spelled C-R-A-C-K- -D-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1To take harsh action (against), as when enforcing a law more stringently than before.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “crack down”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-R-A-C-K- -D-O-W-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kɹæk ˈdaʊn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.