mail-order
"mail-order" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“mail-order” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To buy or sell goods to be delivered by mail.
Corpus desk
Index EN-mail-order · mail-order · English
mail-order · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" 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 | mail-order |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “mail-order” in English
Rare enough to double-check
mail-order is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To buy or sell goods to be delivered by mail.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for mail-order, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is mail-order, spelled M-A-I-L---O-R-D-E-R.
Definition
- 1To buy or sell goods to be delivered by mail.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how mail-order appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
If you want to buy one of the albums reviewed in my article, or any women's music recording, it's not necessary to mail order them unless you can't get to a store. Thanks to Merle and other local distributors around the country, many stores carry women's music.
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.