over the hill

prep_phrase

"over-the-hill" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“over the hill” 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
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Of a person, old, past the prime of life.

Corpus desk

Index EN-over-the-hill · over the hill · English

over the hill · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 13 letters
  • VOW-4 4 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 over the hill
PropertyValue
Headwordover the hill
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechPrep_phrase
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “over the hill” in English

over the hillsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

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

Rare enough to double-check

over the hill is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Of a person, old, past the prime of life.".

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for over the hill, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, 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 over the hill, spelled O-V-E-R- -T-H-E- -H-I-L-L.

Definition

  1. 1
    Of a person, old, past the prime of life.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. Mrs. Joiner is over the hill.

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 "over the hill"?
"over the hill" is spelled O-V-E-R- -T-H-E- -H-I-L-L.
What does "over the hill" mean?
As a prep_phrase, "over the hill" means: Of a person, old, past the prime of life.
What language does "over the hill" come from?
"over the hill" 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