eye for an eye
"eye-for-an-eye" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“eye for an eye” 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) - Compensation for injury caused by a person, in the form of inflicting an identical injury on that person.
Corpus desk
Index EN-eye-for-an-eye · eye for an eye · English
eye for an eye · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-8 8 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 | eye for an eye |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “eye for an eye” in English
Rare enough to double-check
eye for an eye is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Compensation for injury caused by a person, in the form of inflicting an identical injury on that person.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for eye for an eye, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of Hebrew עין תחת עין (ayin tahat ayin), in reference to Exodus 21:23-25: "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for st… The correct English form is eye for an eye, spelled E-Y-E- -F-O-R- -A-N- -E-Y-E.
Definition
- 1Compensation for injury caused by a person, in the form of inflicting an identical injury on that person.
Etymology
Calque of Hebrew עין תחת עין (ayin tahat ayin), in reference to Exodus 21:23-25: "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" (King James Version; spelling modernized).
Antonyms
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.