out like a light
"out-like-a-light" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“out like a light” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Asleep or unconscious, particularly if this has occurred suddenly and the sleep is deep.
Corpus desk
Index EN-out-like-a-light · out like a light · English
out like a light · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-6 6 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 | out like a light |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “out like a light” in English
Rare enough to double-check
out like a light is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Asleep or unconscious, particularly if this has occurred suddenly and the sleep is deep.".
out like a light doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is out like a light, spelled O-U-T- -L-I-K-E- -A- -L-I-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1Asleep or unconscious, particularly if this has occurred suddenly and the sleep is deep.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how out like a light appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Once she received anesthesia, she was out like a light.
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.