off the mark
"off-the-mark" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“off the mark” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a prep_phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Inaccurate; not correct or appropriate.
Corpus desk
Index EN-off-the-mark · off the mark · English
off the mark · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "O" 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 | off the mark |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “off the mark” in English
Rare enough to double-check
off the mark is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for off the mark, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, 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 off the mark, spelled O-F-F- -T-H-E- -M-A-R-K.
Definition
- 1Inaccurate; not correct or appropriate.
- 2Making a start (generally in comparison to others).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how off the mark appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
His answers are consistently off the mark. None of them quite make sense.
Whatever the outcome, Fleet Street's introspective pundits will say: "I told you so", and make dire predictions for the future, which are likely to be off the mark.
Synonyms
Antonyms
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.