slack-jawed
"slack-jawed" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“slack-jawed” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - With the mouth in an open position and the jaw hanging loosely, especially as indicating bewilderment or astonishment.
Corpus desk
Index EN-slack-jawed · slack-jawed · English
slack-jawed · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-3 3 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 | slack-jawed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “slack-jawed” in English
Rare enough to double-check
slack-jawed is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for slack-jawed in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 slack-jawed, spelled S-L-A-C-K---J-A-W-E-D.
Definition
- 1With the mouth in an open position and the jaw hanging loosely, especially as indicating bewilderment or astonishment.
- 2Unsophisticated or unthinking; dimwitted in appearance.
- 3Overly talkative; indiscreet.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how slack-jawed appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
For one frightful moment there was no sound; even the men's breathing was hushed, and they sat slack-jawed, stunned, half-minded to believe this some hideous, incredible jest.
The Pudgelys and the Pinkhearts and the Roundasses are all staring at her, slackjawed.
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.