sum up
"sum-up" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sum up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To produce a total by adding.
Corpus desk
Index EN-sum-up · sum up · English
sum up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 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 | sum up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “sum up” in English
Rare enough to double-check
sum up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
sum up has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is sum up, spelled S-U-M- -U-P.
Definition
- 1To produce a total by adding.
- 2To summarize.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sum up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
We summed up the donations and found that we had just enough to pay the bills.
So, to sum up your argument, what you are saying is that it is impossible.
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.