dress down
"dress-down" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“dress 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 September 3, 2026) - To scold.
Corpus desk
Index EN-dress-down · dress down · English
dress down · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-2 2 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 | dress down |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “dress down” in English
Rare enough to double-check
dress down is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for dress down, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From analogy with dress up. The correct English form is dress down, spelled D-R-E-S-S- -D-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1To scold.
- 2To wear casual or informal clothes.
- 3To prepare (caught fish) by gutting them, removing the heads and backbones, etc.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how dress down appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
One night – it was 2.30am – he dressed down a graduate, screaming in her face: “Are you stupid? Are you a fucking stupid cunt?” I had never seen anything like it in a workplace, or on TV, and I haven’t since.
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other tech luminaries have all been dressed down on Capitol Hill by lawmakers upset with their companies.
Etymology
From analogy with dress up.
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.