full as a tick
"full-as-a-tick" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“full as a tick” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - Engorged with food or drink, especially alcoholic drink.
Corpus desk
Index EN-full-as-a-tick · full as a tick · English
full as a tick · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | full as a tick |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “full as a tick” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
full as a tick is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Engorged with food or drink, especially alcoholic drink.".
Zero misspellings are on record for full as a tick in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is full as a tick, spelled F-U-L-L- -A-S- -A- -T-I-C-K.
Definition
- 1Engorged with food or drink, especially alcoholic drink.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how full as a tick appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Then we drank up all the beer, and threw the bottles into the water and fired at them. . . . "Stop ut!" shouted Mulvaney. "Whin you've fired into nothin' as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. 'Tis worse than whistlin' the Dead March in barricks. An' you full as a tick, an' the sun cool, an' all an' all!"
[B]etween that Dutch cattle salesman and the barkeeper and myself, it would have taken a bookkeeper to have kept a check on the drinks we consumed. . . . Well, I took a seat for a shine, and for two hours I sat there as full as a tick, and as dignified as a judge on the bench.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
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Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.