like the wind
"like-the-wind" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“like the wind” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a prep_phrase. 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) - quickly, at a high speed.
Corpus desk
Index EN-like-the-wind · like the wind · English
like the wind · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "L" 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 | like the wind |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “like the wind” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
like the wind is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
like the wind doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is like the wind, spelled L-I-K-E- -T-H-E- -W-I-N-D.
Definition
- 1quickly, at a high speed.
- 2changeably, freely and at liberty.
- 3invisibly, mysteriously, unpredictably.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how like the wind appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
At any rate, in my experience, they could run like the wind, but longer and heavier trains slowly but surely became too much for them.
Although we took our eight bogies along to Whitstable at 60 m.p.h., and made a clean start from there, after Herne Bay the engine primed badly on Blacksole Bank and nearly stopped before we got over the top. Then we ran like the wind across the marshes with half-regulator, 30 per cent cut-off, and the engine blowing off.
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
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Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.