party line
"party-line" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“party line” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A single telephone line which is shared by two or more households. Formerly common from the inception of telephony (1880s) through the mid-twentieth century.
Corpus desk
Index EN-party-line · party line · English
party line · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | party line |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “party line” in English
Rare enough to double-check
party line is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
party line doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is party line, spelled P-A-R-T-Y- -L-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1A single telephone line which is shared by two or more households. Formerly common from the inception of telephony (1880s) through the mid-twentieth century.
- 2The official policy of a political party or other organization.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how party line appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
In a country where the party line controls the climate debate to the extent that a general apathy infuses the broader public, Howey and Zhao are the sudden, fresh young faces of environmental activism.
On the evening of June 21, 1941, American Communists went to bed subject to one party line. At the sun set, Britain was fighting an imperialist war against Germany, about which the United States must remain neutral. American Communists awoke on June 22, 1941, to discover the party line abruptly changed. Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union. Now the war was…
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.