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egg-on-one-s-face

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

17 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "egg-on-one-s-face", 17-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "egg-on-one-s-face" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "egg-on-one-s-face" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

egg on one's face is aEnglishnoun. It means: Embarrassment or humiliation; damage to one's reputation.

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Key facts for egg on one's face
PropertyValue
Headwordegg on one's face
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters17
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

egg on one's face is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for egg on one's face is 17 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Embarrassment or humiliation; damage to one's reputation.".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for egg on one's face in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: Attested by 1948. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is egg on one's face, spelled E-G-G- -O-N- -O-N-E-'-S- -F-A-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Embarrassment or humiliation; damage to one's reputation.

Etymology

Attested by 1948.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "egg on one's face"?
"egg on one's face" is spelled E-G-G- -O-N- -O-N-E-'-S- -F-A-C-E.
What does "egg on one's face" mean?
As a noun, "egg on one's face" means: Embarrassment or humiliation; damage to one's reputation.
What is the origin of the word "egg on one's face"?
Attested by 1948. See the full etymology section above for more details.
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.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.