pardon me

phrase

"pardon-me" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“pardon me” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sorry; said as an apology.

Corpus desk

Index EN-pardon-me · pardon me · English

pardon me · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-3 3 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.

Key facts for pardon me
PropertyValue
Headwordpardon me
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechPhrase
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “pardon me” in English

pardon meranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

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

Rare enough to double-check

pardon me is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aphrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

No generated misspelling entries exist for pardon me in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 pardon me, spelled P-A-R-D-O-N- -M-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Sorry; said as an apology.
  2. 2
    Polite expression used to soften a contradiction.
  3. 3
    Polite expression to ask someone to repeat an utterance.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Pardon me for stepping on your foot.
  2. Pardon me, but that is not true.

Synonyms

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 "pardon me"?
"pardon me" is spelled P-A-R-D-O-N- -M-E.
What does "pardon me" mean?
As a phrase, "pardon me" means: Sorry; said as an apology.
What language does "pardon me" come from?
"pardon me" 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