look down on
"look-down-on" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“look down on” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To regard or treat as inferior.
Corpus desk
Index EN-look-down-on · look down on · English
look down on · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 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 | look down on |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “look down on” in English
Rare enough to double-check
look down on is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for look down on in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is look down on, spelled L-O-O-K- -D-O-W-N- -O-N.
Definition
- 1To regard or treat as inferior.
- 2To view from a vantage point.
- 3To view [people or events on Earth] from the vantage point of the afterlife (originally, Heaven).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how look down on appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He remembers feeling that people looked down on him, and, ‘realising I was rubbish at academic stuff’, he decided he'd join a circus.
High up on the viaduct, and approached by a spidery staircase from the street, it looks down on Southwark Cathedral.
This word in other languages
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.