stuffed to the gills

adj

"stuffed-to-the-gills" is a 17-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“stuffed to the gills” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
20
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Completely full.

Corpus desk

Index EN-stuffed-to-the-gills · stuffed to the gills · English

stuffed to the gills · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 20 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.

Key facts for stuffed to the gills
PropertyValue
Headwordstuffed to the gills
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechAdjective
Letters20
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “stuffed to the gills” in English

stuffed to the gillsfalls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

stuffed to the gills is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Completely full.".

Zero misspellings are on record for stuffed to the gills in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is stuffed to the gills, spelled S-T-U-F-F-E-D- -T-O- -T-H-E- -G-I-L-L-S.

Definition

  1. 1
    Completely full.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how stuffed to the gills appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Near-synonyms: stuffed; packed to the gills; see also Thesaurus:empty § Antonyms

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "stuffed to the gills"?
"stuffed to the gills" is spelled S-T-U-F-F-E-D- -T-O- -T-H-E- -G-I-L-L-S.
What does "stuffed to the gills" mean?
As an adjective, "stuffed to the gills" means: Completely full.
What language does "stuffed to the gills" come from?
"stuffed to the gills" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list