pain in the butt
"pain-in-the-butt" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pain in the butt” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. 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) - A nuisance; a source of trouble or annoyance.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pain-in-the-butt · pain in the butt · English
pain in the butt · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 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 | pain in the butt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “pain in the butt” in English
Rare enough to double-check
pain in the butt is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A nuisance; a source of trouble or annoyance.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for pain in the butt, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is pain in the butt, spelled P-A-I-N- -I-N- -T-H-E- -B-U-T-T.
Definition
- 1A nuisance; a source of trouble or annoyance.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how pain in the butt appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The customers love it, but the employees think the new system is a pain in the butt.
Synonyms
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.