death sentence

noun

"death-sentence" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“death sentence” 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 September 3, 2026) - A decree that someone be put to death as a punishment for a crime; a sentence of execution.

Corpus desk

Index EN-death-sentence · death sentence · English

death sentence · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 14 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "D" 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 death sentence
PropertyValue
Headworddeath sentence
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “death sentence” in English

death sentenceranks 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

death sentence is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

No misspelling variants are generated for death sentence in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. 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.

No borrowing history is documented for this entry, 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 death sentence, spelled D-E-A-T-H- -S-E-N-T-E-N-C-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    A decree that someone be put to death as a punishment for a crime; a sentence of execution.
  2. 2
    Anything that spells death.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Tyrion’s tears contain the symbolic weight of his whole life; he wouldn’t be here if not for Jaime, as he admits, and his last hope is to give the man who risked everything to help him survive the same chance. Tyrion knows it’s a death sentence from Daenerys to betray her in this way, but he no longer cares.
  2. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball.

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

How do you spell "death sentence"?
"death sentence" is spelled D-E-A-T-H- -S-E-N-T-E-N-C-E.
What does "death sentence" mean?
As a noun, "death sentence" means: A decree that someone be put to death as a punishment for a crime; a sentence of execution.
What language does "death sentence" come from?
"death sentence" 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?
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