front line
"front-line" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“front line” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A front, or a boundary between opposing positions.
Corpus desk
Index EN-front-line · front line · English
front line · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-3 3 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 | front line |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “front line” in English
Rare enough to double-check
front line is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for front line in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is front line, spelled F-R-O-N-T- -L-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1A front, or a boundary between opposing positions.
- 2A site of a conflict, effort, or controversial matter of any kind.
- 3The site of interaction with outsiders, such as customers.
- 4A low level.
- 5attack, collectively the attackers or forwards.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how front line appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
With such results possible on the front line of teaching, the only question remaining is whether much of the education industry will overcome its ....
With Donald J. Trump in office, using Twitter as a cattle prod to shock the country to attention multiple times a day […] there was a sense that every day on the site was a battle. That attitude was reflected in users who saw themselves as soldiers, eternally fighting to shift the front lines of the discourse an inch or two in the correct direction.
Synonyms
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.