good-for-nothing
"good-for-nothing" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“good-for-nothing” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A person of little worth or usefulness.
Corpus desk
Index EN-good-for-nothing · good-for-nothing · English
good-for-nothing · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 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 | good-for-nothing |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “good-for-nothing” in English
Rare enough to double-check
good-for-nothing is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A person of little worth or usefulness.".
Zero misspellings are on record for good-for-nothing in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is good-for-nothing, spelled G-O-O-D---F-O-R---N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1A person of little worth or usefulness.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how good-for-nothing appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Americans might have taken some comfort from the fact that these critics also expressed similar misgivings about Rhodes Scholars coming from elsewhere. Isis, a student publication, lampooned Australians as good-for-nothings who badly needed education.
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.