more-often-than-not
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
19 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "more-often-than-not", 19-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 "more-often-than-not" 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 "more-often-than-not" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
more often than not is anEnglishadv. It means: Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | more often than not |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adv |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for more often than not is 19 letters long, classified as anadv. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case.".
No misspelling variants are generated for more often than not 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: Origin obscure. Semantically equivalent to, and often understood as, an ellipsis of more often than not so. Possibly sometimes understood as more often than zero (see nought and naught), especially in reference to scales or gauges where mark zero represents… 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 more often than not, spelled M-O-R-E- -O-F-T-E-N- -T-H-A-N- -N-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case.
Etymology
Origin obscure. Semantically equivalent to, and often understood as, an ellipsis of more often than not so. Possibly sometimes understood as more often than zero (see nought and naught), especially in reference to scales or gauges where mark zero represents the midpoint of measurement or frequency.
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: