down-to-earth
/ˌdaʊn.ɾəˈɚθ/
"down-to-earth" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“down-to-earth” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Practical; realistic; pragmatic.
Corpus desk
Index EN-down-to-earth · down-to-earth · English
down-to-earth · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 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-to-earth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˌdaʊn.ɾəˈɚθ/ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “down-to-earth” in English
Rare enough to double-check
down-to-earth is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed /ˌdaʊn.ɾəˈɚθ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for down-to-earth in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 down-to-earth, spelled D-O-W-N---T-O---E-A-R-T-H.
Definition
- 1Practical; realistic; pragmatic.
- 2Ordinary; normal; run-of-the-mill.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how down-to-earth appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He had a down-to-earth attitude that translated into a straightforward, but effective strategy.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not going to devote any of tonight's news to evil monkey shenanigans unless you can find something more down to earth to focus your report on."
Synonyms
Antonyms
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.