strike out
"strike-out" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“strike out” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. 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) - To lash out; to strike or hit at someone or something, particularly something in arm's length of the striker and at or near the level of the striker's head.
Corpus desk
Index EN-strike-out · strike out · English
strike out · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | strike out |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “strike out” in English
Rare enough to double-check
strike out is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 7 senses are on record.
strike out has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword 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 its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is strike out, spelled S-T-R-I-K-E- -O-U-T.
Definition
- 1To lash out; to strike or hit at someone or something, particularly something in arm's length of the striker and at or near the level of the striker's head.
- 2To strongly criticize or make a verbal attack, particularly as a response to previous criticism or provocation.
- 3To draw a line through some text such as a printed or written sentence, with the purpose of deleting that text from the rest of the document.
- 4to treat something as settled
- 5Of a batter, to be retired after three strikes (missed swings, as opposed to any other way of becoming "out"); of a pitcher, to cause this to happen to the batter.
- 6To fail; to be refused a request or to have a proposal not be accepted, in particular a request for a (hopefully romantic) date.
- 7To begin to make one's way.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how strike out appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The gallant old skipper had struck out with his fist and the blow took effect; "spread the chap's nose all ower his fyesce" as he afterwards said ...
... 1937, before the Maryland Farm Bureau Federation, he struck out at his critics. He said: When the Federal Government first undertook to help farmers get ...
Synonyms
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.