great balls of fire
"great-balls-of-fire" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“great balls of fire” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an interjection. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Expressing great surprise.
Corpus desk
Index EN-great-balls-of-fire · great balls of fire · English
great balls of fire · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 19 letters
- VOW-6 6 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 | great balls of fire |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “great balls of fire” in English
Rare enough to double-check
great balls of fire is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aninterjection. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Expressing great surprise.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for great balls of fire, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is great balls of fire, spelled G-R-E-A-T- -B-A-L-L-S- -O-F- -F-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1Expressing great surprise.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how great balls of fire appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!
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.