drive someone up the wall
"drive-someone-up-the-wall" is a 21-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“drive someone up the wall” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 25
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To make a person very angry or frustrated; to infuriate.
Corpus desk
Index EN-drive-someone-up-the-wal · drive someone up the wall · English
drive someone up the wall · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 25 letters
- VOW-9 9 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 | drive someone up the wall |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 25 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “drive someone up the wall” in English
Rare enough to double-check
drive someone up the wall is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To make a person very angry or frustrated; to infuriate.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for drive someone up the wall, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is drive someone up the wall, spelled D-R-I-V-E- -S-O-M-E-O-N-E- -U-P- -T-H-E- -W-A-L-L.
Definition
- 1To make a person very angry or frustrated; to infuriate.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how drive someone up the wall appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Her persistent nagging and constant bickering with me nearly drove me up the wall.
There is nothing and no one that's going to shut him up. That's what makes [Chris] Tucker funny. It's also what can drive you up the wall about him.
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.