owing to

prep

"owing-to" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“owing to” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a preposition. 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) - Because of, on account of.

Corpus desk

Index EN-owing-to · owing to · English

owing to · 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 owing to
PropertyValue
Headwordowing to
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechPreposition
Letters8
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “owing to” in English

owing tofalls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

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

Rare enough to double-check

owing to is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as apreposition. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Because of, on account of.".

owing to doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

No documented word history exists for this headword, 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 owing to, spelled O-W-I-N-G- -T-O.

Definition

  1. 1
    Because of, on account of.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. I gave up my job as a typist owing to repetitive strain injury.
  2. It’s all owing to your precious caution that they got hold of it. If you had let me burn it, and taken my word that it was gone, it would have been a heap of ashes behind the fire, instead of being whole and sound, inside of my great-coat.

Synonyms

as a consequence ofas a result ofbecause ofdue tothanks toon account of

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 "owing to"?
"owing to" is spelled O-W-I-N-G- -T-O.
What does "owing to" mean?
As a preposition, "owing to" means: Because of, on account of.
What language does "owing to" come from?
"owing to" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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