feet on the ground
"feet-on-the-ground" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“feet on the ground” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 18
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Used to indicate behavior or manner characteristic of a sensible and practical person.
Corpus desk
Index EN-feet-on-the-ground · feet on the ground · English
feet on the ground · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 18 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" 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 | feet on the ground |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 18 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “feet on the ground” in English
Rare enough to double-check
feet on the ground is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
feet on the ground doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is feet on the ground, spelled F-E-E-T- -O-N- -T-H-E- -G-R-O-U-N-D.
Definition
- 1Used to indicate behavior or manner characteristic of a sensible and practical person.
- 2Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see feet, on, ground.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how feet on the ground appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
We think we can trust John with this new position, as he has his feet on the ground.
The genre of business advice and career advice sometimes comically mixes its metaphors, as for example when it tells us that we must keep our feet on the ground and must also reach for the stars at the same time.
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.