English Word Reference Free

shoot-oneself-in-the-foot

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

Letters

25 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

open dictionary

Access

Free

no sign-up needed

Detailed reference entry for the English word "shoot-oneself-in-the-foot", 25-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 "shoot-oneself-in-the-foot" 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 "shoot-oneself-in-the-foot" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

shoot oneself in the foot is aEnglishverb. It means: To act against one's own interests; to unintentionally behave self-destructively.

Compare similar words

See how shoot oneself in the foot compares against similar English words.

Browse all word comparisons →
Key facts for shoot oneself in the foot
PropertyValue
Headwordshoot oneself in the foot
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters25
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

shoot oneself in the foot 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 shoot oneself in the foot is 25 letters long, classified as averb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "To act against one's own interests; to unintentionally behave self-destructively.".

No misspelling variants are generated for shoot oneself in the foot 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.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is shoot oneself in the foot, spelled S-H-O-O-T- -O-N-E-S-E-L-F- -I-N- -T-H-E- -F-O-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    To act against one's own interests; to unintentionally behave self-destructively.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "shoot oneself in the foot"?
"shoot oneself in the foot" is spelled S-H-O-O-T- -O-N-E-S-E-L-F- -I-N- -T-H-E- -F-O-O-T.
What does "shoot oneself in the foot" mean?
As a verb, "shoot oneself in the foot" means: To act against one's own interests; to unintentionally behave self-destructively.
What language does "shoot oneself in the foot" come from?
"shoot oneself in the foot" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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.

Nearby English words

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

Explore PlainSpell

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.