old woman

noun

"old-woman" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“old woman” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An elderly woman.

Corpus desk

Index EN-old-woman · old woman · English

old woman · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 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.

Key facts for old woman
PropertyValue
Headwordold woman
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “old woman” in English

old womanranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

old woman is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for old woman, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is old woman, spelled O-L-D- -W-O-M-A-N.

Definition

  1. 1
    An elderly woman.
  2. 2
    A person (irrespective of age or sex) who is always complaining about his or her situation.
  3. 3
    One's wife.
  4. 4
    One's mother.
  5. 5
    The plant sea wormwood.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how old woman appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Stop being such an old woman and get on with it.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "old woman"?
"old woman" is spelled O-L-D- -W-O-M-A-N.
What does "old woman" mean?
As a noun, "old woman" means: An elderly woman.
What language does "old woman" come from?
"old woman" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list