kiss-up
"kiss-up" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“kiss-up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - One who flatters a supervisor, or superior, in order to get special attention
Corpus desk
Index EN-kiss-up · kiss-up · English
kiss-up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 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 | kiss-up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “kiss-up” in English
Rare enough to double-check
kiss-up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "One who flatters a supervisor, or superior, in order to get special attention".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for kiss-up, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: Deverbal from kiss up. The correct English form is kiss-up, spelled K-I-S-S---U-P.
Definition
- 1One who flatters a supervisor, or superior, in order to get special attention
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how kiss-up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Joe got that promotion because he was a kiss-up, not because he knew the job.
Etymology
Deverbal from kiss up.
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.