hide and seek

noun

"hide-and-seek" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“hide and seek” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A game where the players have to hide and one has to seek them out.

Corpus desk

Index EN-hide-and-seek · hide and seek · English

hide and seek · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 13 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "H" 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.

Key facts for hide and seek
PropertyValue
Headwordhide and seek
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “hide and seek” in English

hide and seekfalls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

hide and seek is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A game where the players have to hide and one has to seek them out.".

hide and seek has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. 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.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is hide and seek, spelled H-I-D-E- -A-N-D- -S-E-E-K.

Definition

  1. 1
    A game where the players have to hide and one has to seek them out.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how hide and seek appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand; and at last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at hide-and-seek in my hair.

Synonyms

hide and coophide and go seek

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

How do you spell "hide and seek"?
"hide and seek" is spelled H-I-D-E- -A-N-D- -S-E-E-K.
What does "hide and seek" mean?
As a noun, "hide and seek" means: A game where the players have to hide and one has to seek them out.
What language does "hide and seek" come from?
"hide and seek" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list