take the mickey
"take-the-mickey" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“take the mickey” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To ridicule or mock.
Corpus desk
Index EN-take-the-mickey · take the mickey · English
take the mickey · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" 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 | take the mickey |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “take the mickey” in English
Rare enough to double-check
take the mickey is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To ridicule or mock.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for take the mickey, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: Possibly from Cockney rhyming slang “to take the Mickey Bliss” (for take the piss). The correct English form is take the mickey, spelled T-A-K-E- -T-H-E- -M-I-C-K-E-Y.
Definition
- 1To ridicule or mock.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how take the mickey appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Are you takin’ the mickey? You’ll get yer ’ead bashed in.
For the last eight years, taking the mickey out of George Bush has been great, victimless fun. Like taking candy from babies or shooting aquatically-challenged fish in size-challenged barrels.
Etymology
Possibly from Cockney rhyming slang “to take the Mickey Bliss” (for take the piss).
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.