grosso modo
"grosso-modo" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“grosso modo” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - roughly, circa or approximately
Corpus desk
Index EN-grosso-modo · grosso modo · English
grosso modo · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 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 | grosso modo |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “grosso modo” in English
Rare enough to double-check
grosso modo is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadverb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "roughly, circa or approximately".
No misspelling variants are generated for grosso modo in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Latin grossō modō. The correct English form is grosso modo, spelled G-R-O-S-S-O- -M-O-D-O.
Definition
- 1roughly, circa or approximately
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how grosso modo appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
1980. Henry Mehlberg, Robert Sonné Cohen. Time, Causality, and the Quantum Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of Science. p. 211. The fact that event B takes place in the interval separating events A and C has an invariant significance, which may be expressed grosso modo by saying that events which are closer together have more effects in common.
1985. Edward W. Said. Orientalism Reconsidered. Cultural Critique, 1, pp. 94-95. Still others criticize Orientalism for falsifying the nature of Islam: these are, grosso modo, the fundamentalists.
Etymology
From Latin grossō modō.
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.