night watchman
"night-watchman" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“night watchman” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Prior to police forces, a person appointed by a town or city to walk the streets at night and guard the burghers from felons and robbers.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | night watchman |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “night watchman” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
night watchman is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for night watchman in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, 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 night watchman, spelled N-I-G-H-T- -W-A-T-C-H-M-A-N.
Definition
- 1Prior to police forces, a person appointed by a town or city to walk the streets at night and guard the burghers from felons and robbers.
- 2A person who guards (usually at a building) at night.
- 3A lower order batter to play the last overs in low light to save better batters for the next day's play.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “night watchman”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is N-I-G-H-T- -W-A-T-C-H-M-A-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.