how farest thou
/haʊ ˈfɛəɹɪst ðaʊ/
"how-farest-thou" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“how farest thou” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - how are you?, how's it going?
Corpus desk
Index EN-how-farest-thou · how farest thou · English
how farest thou · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | how farest thou |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| IPA | /haʊ ˈfɛəɹɪst ðaʊ/ |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “how farest thou” in English
Rare enough to double-check
how farest thou is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aphrase, transcribed /haʊ ˈfɛəɹɪst ðaʊ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "how are you?, how's it going?".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for how farest thou, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Occurs already as Old English hū færest þū, literally “how are you going or traveling.” The correct English form is how farest thou, spelled H-O-W- -F-A-R-E-S-T- -T-H-O-U.
Definition
- 1how are you?, how's it going?
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how how farest thou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
POMPEY: "I know thee now. How farest thou, soldier?" ENOBARBUS: "Well. And well am like to do, for I perceive four feasts are toward."
Etymology
Occurs already as Old English hū færest þū, literally “how are you going or traveling.”
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.