God bless you
"god-bless-you" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“God bless you” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an interjection. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - May God bless you; said as a short prayer, benediction, or valediction for the recipient; usually religiously; sometimes nonliterally but rhetorically or culturally.
Corpus desk
Index EN-god-bless-you · God bless you · English
God bless you · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 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 | God bless you |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “God bless you” in English
Rare enough to double-check
God bless you is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aninterjection. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for God bless you in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English God blesse you, God blisse you. A clause in the present subjunctive inherited intact from a time when English was freely productive of it. Diachronically it is not a shortening; synchronically it is often surface-analyzed as such; presen… The correct English form is God bless you, spelled G-O-D- -B-L-E-S-S- -Y-O-U.
Definition
- 1May God bless you; said as a short prayer, benediction, or valediction for the recipient; usually religiously; sometimes nonliterally but rhetorically or culturally.
- 2Said to somebody who has sneezed, as a rhetorical response; alternative form of bless you.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how God bless you appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I heard you helped them with clearing away the downed tree. God bless you! The Lord provides!
You got that whole area cleaned up in one day? God bless you! I'll buy your coffee today!
Etymology
From Middle English God blesse you, God blisse you. A clause in the present subjunctive inherited intact from a time when English was freely productive of it. Diachronically it is not a shortening; synchronically it is often surface-analyzed as such; present-day English has a heavy need for the modal auxiliary (may) to ensure syntactic clarity, whereas earlier English could more easily drop it.
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.