down payment
"down-payment" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“down payment” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A payment representing a fraction of the price of something being purchased, made to secure the right to continue making payments towards that purchase.
Corpus desk
Index EN-down-payment · down payment · English
down payment · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-4 4 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | down payment |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “down payment” in English
Rare enough to double-check
down payment is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
down payment has no tracked misspelling variants, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is down payment, spelled D-O-W-N- -P-A-Y-M-E-N-T.
Definition
- 1A payment representing a fraction of the price of something being purchased, made to secure the right to continue making payments towards that purchase.
- 2Any initial commitment signifying an intention to carry out a larger future commitment, even though no legal rights or obligations are secured.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how down payment appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Her parents considered her school tuition a down payment on her future.
After decades of empty rhetoric, that's the down payment that we need on energy independence.
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.