eat one's words
"eat-one-s-words" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“eat one's words” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To regret or retract what one has said.
Corpus desk
Index EN-eat-one-s-words · eat one's words · English
eat one's words · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "E" 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 | eat one's words |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “eat one's words” in English
Rare enough to double-check
eat one's words is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To regret or retract what one has said.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for eat one's words, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, 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 eat one's words, spelled E-A-T- -O-N-E-'-S- -W-O-R-D-S.
Definition
- 1To regret or retract what one has said.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how eat one's words appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He didn't think I could do it, but I proved him wrong and made him eat his words.
This time, you have to eat your words, because, like it or not, you lost.
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.