drinking water

noun

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

The verdict

“drinking water” 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) - Water that is suitable or intended for ingestion by humans: potable water.

Corpus desk

Index EN-drinking-water · drinking water · English

drinking water · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 14 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.

Key facts for drinking water
PropertyValue
Headworddrinking water
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “drinking water” in English

drinking waterfalls 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 water is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Water that is suitable or intended for ingestion by humans: potable water.".

Zero misspellings are on record for drinking water in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is drinking water, spelled D-R-I-N-K-I-N-G- -W-A-T-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    Water that is suitable or intended for ingestion by humans: potable water.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Near-synonym: tap water (for washing and, ideally, drinking too)
  2. One day a saint, wandering in the vicinity in search of drinking water, fainted. As he regained his senses, he could hear the trickle of water running from the Pot. He drank his fill and since then the spring has never gone dry.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "drinking water"?
"drinking water" is spelled D-R-I-N-K-I-N-G- -W-A-T-E-R.
What does "drinking water" mean?
As a noun, "drinking water" means: Water that is suitable or intended for ingestion by humans: potable water.
What language does "drinking water" come from?
"drinking water" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
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