down on one's luck
"down-on-one-s-luck" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“down on one's luck” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as an adjective - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 18
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Unlucky or undergoing a period of bad luck, especially with respect to financial matters.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | down on one's luck |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 18 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “down on one's luck” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for down on one's luck is 18 letters long, classified as an adjective. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Unlucky or undergoing a period of bad luck, especially with respect to financial matters.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for down on one's luck, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is down on one's luck, spelled D-O-W-N- -O-N- -O-N-E-'-S- -L-U-C-K.
Definition
- 1Unlucky or undergoing a period of bad luck, especially with respect to financial matters.
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.
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Using “down on one's luck”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-O-W-N- -O-N- -O-N-E-'-S- -L-U-C-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.