Gordon Bennett
"gordon-bennett" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Gordon Bennett” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an interjection. 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) - expression of surprise, contempt, outrage, disgust, frustration.
Corpus desk
Index EN-gordon-bennett · Gordon Bennett · English
Gordon Bennett · 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 "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 | Gordon Bennett |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Gordon Bennett” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
Gordon Bennett is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aninterjection. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "expression of surprise, contempt, outrage, disgust, frustration.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for Gordon Bennett in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: For James Gordon Bennett, Jr., a New York newspaper proprietor and playboy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who became widely known for his extravagant lifestyle and shocking behaviour. The first time the expression appears in print … The correct English form is Gordon Bennett, spelled G-O-R-D-O-N- -B-E-N-N-E-T-T.
Definition
- 1expression of surprise, contempt, outrage, disgust, frustration.
Etymology
For James Gordon Bennett, Jr., a New York newspaper proprietor and playboy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who became widely known for his extravagant lifestyle and shocking behaviour. The first time the expression appears in print was in 1937, in James Curtis's novel, You’re in the Racket, Too. The Oxford English Dictionary places the phrase in the 1890s as an alteration of gorblimey and again in reference to James Gordon Bennett Jr. The name was probably chosen because the first syllable of Gordon sounds like God in non-rhotic pronunciations, which would make this a minced oath.
Synonyms
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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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.