marching powder

noun

"marching-powder" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“marching powder” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
15
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Ellipsis of Bolivian marching powder (“cocaine”).

Corpus desk

Index EN-marching-powder · marching powder · English

marching powder · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 15 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.

Key facts for marching powder
PropertyValue
Headwordmarching powder
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters15
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “marching powder” in English

marching powderranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

marching powder is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for marching powder, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. 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.

No borrowing history is documented 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 marching powder, spelled M-A-R-C-H-I-N-G- -P-O-W-D-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    Ellipsis of Bolivian marching powder (“cocaine”).
  2. 2
    A powder such as talcum used in socks to keep blisters from forming.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how marching powder appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. ‘How much did you do last night? Two grams? I like the old marching powder, Jon, but I prefer to give myself a day or two off after a binge.’
  2. Maybe Malaysia had less corrupt politicians than Jamaica or Columbia. Maybe the population doesn't spend all day stuffing marching powder up its noses and buckles down and gets some work done.

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

How do you spell "marching powder"?
"marching powder" is spelled M-A-R-C-H-I-N-G- -P-O-W-D-E-R.
What does "marching powder" mean?
As a noun, "marching powder" means: Ellipsis of Bolivian marching powder (“cocaine”).
What language does "marching powder" come from?
"marching powder" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list