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pain-in-the-arse

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

16 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "pain-in-the-arse", 16-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "pain-in-the-arse" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "pain-in-the-arse" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

pain in the arse is aEnglishnoun. It means: Someone or something that is annoying or frustrating. Pronounced /ˈpeɪn ɪn ði ˌɑːs/.

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Key facts for pain in the arse
PropertyValue
Headwordpain in the arse
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/ˈpeɪn ɪn ði ˌɑːs/
Letters16
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

pain in the arse is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for pain in the arse is 16 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpeɪn ɪn ði ˌɑːs/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Someone or something that is annoying or frustrating.".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for pain in the arse in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is pain in the arse, spelled P-A-I-N- -I-N- -T-H-E- -A-R-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Someone or something that is annoying or frustrating.

Synonyms

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "pain in the arse"?
"pain in the arse" is spelled P-A-I-N- -I-N- -T-H-E- -A-R-S-E. The IPA pronunciation is /ˈpeɪn ɪn ði ˌɑːs/.
What does "pain in the arse" mean?
As a noun, "pain in the arse" means: Someone or something that is annoying or frustrating.
How do you pronounce "pain in the arse"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "pain in the arse" is /ˈpeɪn ɪn ði ˌɑːs/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "pain in the arse" come from?
"pain in the arse" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.