packed to the gills
"packed-to-the-gills" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“packed to the gills” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Completely packed; very full or crowded.
Corpus desk
Index EN-packed-to-the-gills · packed to the gills · English
packed to the gills · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 19 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" 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 | packed to the gills |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “packed to the gills” in English
Rare enough to double-check
packed to the gills is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Completely packed; very full or crowded.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for packed to the gills, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is packed to the gills, spelled P-A-C-K-E-D- -T-O- -T-H-E- -G-I-L-L-S.
Definition
- 1Completely packed; very full or crowded.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how packed to the gills appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Near-synonym: stuffed to the gills
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.