drinking-straw

noun

"drinking-straw" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“drinking-straw” 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) - Dated form of drinking straw.

Corpus desk

Index EN-drinking-straw · drinking-straw · English

drinking-straw · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 14 letters
  • VOW-3 3 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 drinking-straw
PropertyValue
Headworddrinking-straw
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “drinking-straw” in English

drinking-strawfalls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

drinking-straw is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Dated form of drinking straw.".

drinking-straw doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is drinking-straw, spelled D-R-I-N-K-I-N-G---S-T-R-A-W.

Definition

  1. 1
    Dated form of drinking straw.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Apples, liquid, fresh and sweet, were present too, and their little brown jug with its drinking-straws was pleasantly patronized in its quaintly retired corner.
  2. The bureau of manufactures, department of commerce and labor, has a communication from an American business house which states it has been purchasing drinking-straws abroad, but would like to make purchases in the home market.

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 "drinking-straw"?
"drinking-straw" is spelled D-R-I-N-K-I-N-G---S-T-R-A-W.
What does "drinking-straw" mean?
As a noun, "drinking-straw" means: Dated form of drinking straw.
What language does "drinking-straw" come from?
"drinking-straw" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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