oral sex

noun

"oral-sex" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

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

Unranked
below top-frequency English
8
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Stimulation of another person's genitals or anus using the mouth, lips, and/or tongue.

Corpus desk

Index EN-oral-sex · oral sex · English

oral sex · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 8 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 oral sex
PropertyValue
Headwordoral sex
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters8
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “oral sex” in English

oral sexranks 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

oral sex is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Stimulation of another person's genitals or anus using the mouth, lips, and/or tongue.".

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for oral sex, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is oral sex, spelled O-R-A-L- -S-E-X.

Definition

  1. 1
    Stimulation of another person's genitals or anus using the mouth, lips, and/or tongue.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. The Beard’s climactic scene, an oral sex act, is not as startling or fresh as McClure apparently thinks. It is a continuation of the second act curtain of Albee's Tiny Alice, in which Irene Worth, shielded from the audience by her robe, seemingly displayed her nude body to John Gielgud, who dropped to his knees before her while she uttered orgiastic cries.
  2. What Ms Whitaker did is no longer a crime in Georgia. The state’s sodomy laws, which in 1996 barred oral sex even between willing spouses, were struck down by court rulings in 1998 and 2003.

Synonyms

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 "oral sex"?
"oral sex" is spelled O-R-A-L- -S-E-X.
What does "oral sex" mean?
As a noun, "oral sex" means: Stimulation of another person's genitals or anus using the mouth, lips, and/or tongue.
What language does "oral sex" come from?
"oral sex" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
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