long-shot
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
9 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "long-shot", 9-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "long-shot" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "long-shot" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
long shot is aEnglishnoun. It means: A shot fired at a distant target.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | long shot |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for long shot is 9 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for long shot in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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.
Etymologically, the entry records: From long + shot. The term arose from the accuracy of early naval guns, which were effective only at close range and unlikely to hit the mark at any great distance. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is long shot, spelled L-O-N-G- -S-H-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A shot fired at a distant target.
- 2Something unlikely; something that has little chance of happening or working; long odds
- 3A master shot, the primary wide shot of a scene into which the closeups will be edited later.
- 4Synonym of long take; a single, continuous shot that lasts for an unusually long duration without any cuts.
Etymology
From long + shot. The term arose from the accuracy of early naval guns, which were effective only at close range and unlikely to hit the mark at any great distance.
Synonyms
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: