next to nothing
"next-to-nothing" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“next to nothing” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a pronoun. 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) - Very little.
Corpus desk
Index EN-next-to-nothing · next to nothing · English
next to nothing · 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 "N" 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 | next to nothing |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pronoun |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “next to nothing” in English
Rare enough to double-check
next to nothing is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as apronoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Very little.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for next to nothing, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is next to nothing, spelled N-E-X-T- -T-O- -N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Definition
- 1Very little.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how next to nothing appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I got it for next to nothing in the January sales.
He pretends to be knowledgeable, but actually he knows next to nothing.
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.