million-dollar question
Detailed reference entry for the English word "million-dollar-question", 23-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "million-dollar-question" 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 "million-dollar-question" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
The verdict
“million-dollar question” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 23
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A question that is very important, difficult to answer, or (especially) both.
Compare similar words
See how million-dollar question compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | million-dollar question |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 23 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “million-dollar question” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for million-dollar question is 23 letters long, classified as a noun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for million-dollar question in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. 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: This collocation and its idiomatic meaning both long predate the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, whose last question involves a top prize of $1,000,000. They also predate the sixty-four thousand dollar question, which came from a TV game show t… 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 million-dollar question, spelled M-I-L-L-I-O-N---D-O-L-L-A-R- -Q-U-E-S-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A question that is very important, difficult to answer, or (especially) both.
- 2Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: a question to be decided, on whose answer depends a million-dollar expenditure.
Etymology
This collocation and its idiomatic meaning both long predate the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, whose last question involves a top prize of $1,000,000. They also predate the sixty-four thousand dollar question, which came from a TV game show that started in 1955 but clearly was itself influenced by similar existing constructions, including million-dollar question, which had this sense by 1927 at latest. The corpus shows that a burst of heightened popularity for such constructions occurred in the 1940s because of the radio program Take It or Leave It, which contained a sixty-four dollar question. All such collocations naming expensive questions seem to have their ultimate origins in literal instances (with various price tags) as managerial and public-debate issues; various examples of those are seen in publications from the 1910s.
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “million-dollar question, English word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/en/word/million-dollar-question
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Using “million-dollar question”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-I-L-L-I-O-N---D-O-L-L-A-R- -Q-U-E-S-T-I-O-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: