keep one's mouth shut
"keep-one-s-mouth-shut" is a 17-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“keep one's mouth shut” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 21
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To keep a secret; to refrain from speaking indiscreetly or carelessly; broadly, to refrain from speaking altogether.
Corpus desk
Index EN-keep-one-s-mouth-shut · keep one's mouth shut · English
keep one's mouth shut · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 21 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "K" 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 | keep one's mouth shut |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 21 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “keep one's mouth shut” in English
Rare enough to double-check
keep one's mouth shut is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To keep a secret; to refrain from speaking indiscreetly or carelessly; broadly, to refrain from speaking altogether.".
keep one's mouth shut has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is keep one's mouth shut, spelled K-E-E-P- -O-N-E-'-S- -M-O-U-T-H- -S-H-U-T.
Definition
- 1To keep a secret; to refrain from speaking indiscreetly or carelessly; broadly, to refrain from speaking altogether.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how keep one's mouth shut appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Near-synonym: keep it in the family
He thought that he could get him a regular salary if he would come to Packingtown and do as he was told, and keep his mouth shut.
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.