hot water
"hot-water" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hot water” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A dangerous situation; trouble.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hot-water · hot water · English
hot water · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hot water |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hot water” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hot water is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for hot water in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is hot water, spelled H-O-T- -W-A-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1A dangerous situation; trouble.
- 2Fierce criticism.
- 3Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hot, water.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hot water appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Both students are in hot water from fighting.
The government's new proposal has landed them in hot water.
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.