give the elbow
"give-the-elbow" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“give the elbow” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. 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) - To fire (an employee); to end a relationship with someone; to reject someone.
Corpus desk
Index EN-give-the-elbow · give the elbow · English
give the elbow · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "G" 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 | give the elbow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “give the elbow” in English
Rare enough to double-check
give the elbow is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To fire (an employee); to end a relationship with someone; to reject someone.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for give the elbow, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is give the elbow, spelled G-I-V-E- -T-H-E- -E-L-B-O-W.
Definition
- 1To fire (an employee); to end a relationship with someone; to reject someone.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how give the elbow appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
They said I couldn't do the job so they gave me the elbow. So, now I'm looking for work again.
When are you finally going to give your boyfriend the elbow?
Synonyms
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.