small beer
"small-beer" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“small beer” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Beer with a low alcoholic content, usually between 0.5% and 2.8%.
Corpus desk
Index EN-small-beer · small beer · English
small beer · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 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 | small beer |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “small beer” in English
Rare enough to double-check
small beer is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for small beer in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is small beer, spelled S-M-A-L-L- -B-E-E-R.
Definition
- 1Beer with a low alcoholic content, usually between 0.5% and 2.8%.
- 2Something that is of relatively little importance.
- 3Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see small, beer.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how small beer appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It was then that the large footmen were too much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks
Looking back to the 18th century, when the production of very low-alcohol ‘small’ beers was widespread as a safer alternative to dirty drinking water for the whole family, Small Beer produces a set of sub-3% brews.
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.