on the house
"on-the-house" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“on the house” 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) - free, complimentary.
Corpus desk
Index EN-on-the-house · on the house · English
on the house · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-5 5 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 | on the house |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “on the house” in English
Rare enough to double-check
on the house is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "free, complimentary.".
Zero misspellings are on record for on the house in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is on the house, spelled O-N- -T-H-E- -H-O-U-S-E.
Definition
- 1free, complimentary.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how on the house appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
This voucher entitles you to a free drink on the house.
It is obviously a "plum" job, one distinction being that its motormen are granted an allowance of about 6s. [six shillings] towards the cost of Wagons-Lits food in the crew quarters of the train, [...]. Additionally, by the way, each man is allowed a quarter of a bottle of wine "on the house" per trip!
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.