Grim Reaper
/ˈɡɹɪm ˈɹiː.pə/
"grim-reaper" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Grim Reaper” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a proper noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A personification of Death as an old man, or a skeleton, carrying a scythe, taking souls to the afterlife.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Grim Reaper |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | /ˈɡɹɪm ˈɹiː.pə/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Grim Reaper” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Grim Reaper is 11 letters long, classified as a proper noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɡɹɪm ˈɹiː.pə/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A personification of Death as an old man, or a skeleton, carrying a scythe, taking souls to the afterlife.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for Grim Reaper, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From grim + reaper, first attested 1847. The word grim previously had a stronger meaning ("fierce, angry, sinister") and had more of an association with ghostliness (compare Old English grima (“specter, apparition”), English grim (n.)). The association betw… The correct English form is Grim Reaper, spelled G-R-I-M- -R-E-A-P-E-R.
Definition
- 1A personification of Death as an old man, or a skeleton, carrying a scythe, taking souls to the afterlife.
Etymology
From grim + reaper, first attested 1847. The word grim previously had a stronger meaning ("fierce, angry, sinister") and had more of an association with ghostliness (compare Old English grima (“specter, apparition”), English grim (n.)). The association between grim and death dates back to at least the late 16th century (the line "grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image" appears in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew around 1590). The reaper element comes from the personification of Death as a reaper (harvester) of souls in connection to the popular depiction of Death wielding a scythe. The symbol of the scythe itself comes from a partially unintentional conflation of Cronus (the Titan associated with the harvest, said to have used his scythe to castrate his father Uranus) and Chronos (the personification of Father Time).
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “Grim Reaper”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-R-I-M- -R-E-A-P-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈɡɹɪm ˈɹiː.pə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.