penny-wise
"penny-wise" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“penny-wise” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. 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) - Thrifty in regards to small amounts of money.
Corpus desk
Index EN-penny-wise · penny-wise · English
penny-wise · 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 | penny-wise |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “penny-wise” in English
Rare enough to double-check
penny-wise is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Thrifty in regards to small amounts of money.".
No misspelling variants are generated for penny-wise in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: From penny + wise. The correct English form is penny-wise, spelled P-E-N-N-Y---W-I-S-E.
Definition
- 1Thrifty in regards to small amounts of money.
Etymology
From penny + wise.
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.