rough sleeper
"rough-sleeper" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“rough sleeper” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A homeless person who sleeps outdoors.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rough sleeper |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “rough sleeper” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
rough sleeper is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A homeless person who sleeps outdoors.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for rough sleeper, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is rough sleeper, spelled R-O-U-G-H- -S-L-E-E-P-E-R.
Definition
- 1A homeless person who sleeps outdoors.
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
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Using “rough sleeper”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-O-U-G-H- -S-L-E-E-P-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.