shy away from
"shy-away-from" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shy away from” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To avoid out of fear or caution.
Corpus desk
Index EN-shy-away-from · shy away from · English
shy away from · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" 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 | shy away from |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “shy away from” in English
Rare enough to double-check
shy away from is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To avoid out of fear or caution.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for shy away from, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is shy away from, spelled S-H-Y- -A-W-A-Y- -F-R-O-M.
Definition
- 1To avoid out of fear or caution.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how shy away from appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The Conan O’Brien-penned half-hour has the capacity to rip our collective hearts out the way the cute, funny bad girl next door does to Bart when she reveals that her new boyfriend is Jimbo Jones, but the show keeps shying away from genuine emotion in favor of jokes that, while overwhelmingly funny, detract from the poignancy and the emotional intimacy of…
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.