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saturday-night-special

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

22 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

open dictionary

Access

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "saturday-night-special", 22-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "saturday-night-special" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "saturday-night-special" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

Saturday-night special is aEnglishnoun. It means: An inexpensive, easily obtained handgun.

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Key facts for Saturday-night special
PropertyValue
HeadwordSaturday-night special
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters22
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Saturday-night special is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for Saturday-night special is 22 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No misspelling variants are generated for Saturday-night special in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: Attested from 1917, akin to Saturday-night pistol attested from 1915. Not entirely clear, but perhaps from phrases like “Saturday night pistol slaying” and “Saturday night pistol scrape” often found in early 20th century local crime reporting due to the fac… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is Saturday-night special, spelled S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y---N-I-G-H-T- -S-P-E-C-I-A-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    An inexpensive, easily obtained handgun.
  2. 2
    An overnight weekend train.
  3. 3
    A seasonal (usually October to December) sale on Saturday evening.
  4. 4
    A girl who can be dated easily on Saturday evenings.
  5. 5
    An unexpected takeover bid that gives its opponents little time to respond.

Etymology

Attested from 1917, akin to Saturday-night pistol attested from 1915. Not entirely clear, but perhaps from phrases like “Saturday night pistol slaying” and “Saturday night pistol scrape” often found in early 20th century local crime reporting due to the fact that Saturday evening had been the peak time for homicides and similar crimes. Also likely to be enforced by the obsolete meaning of a cheap sale and usage of "Special" in the context of more powerful firearms like Colt Police Positive Special.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "Saturday-night special"?
"Saturday-night special" is spelled S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y---N-I-G-H-T- -S-P-E-C-I-A-L.
What does "Saturday-night special" mean?
As a noun, "Saturday-night special" means: An inexpensive, easily obtained handgun.
What is the origin of the word "Saturday-night special"?
Attested from 1917, akin to Saturday-night pistol attested from 1915. Not entirely clear, but perhaps from phrases like “Saturday night pistol slaying” and “Saturday night pistol scrape” often found in early 20th century local crime reporting due ... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index:

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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.