tally up

verb

"tally-up" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“tally 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
8
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To count or sum; to add up.

Corpus desk

Index EN-tally-up · tally up · English

tally up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-3 3 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.

Key facts for tally up
PropertyValue
Headwordtally up
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters8
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “tally up” in English

tally upsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

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

Rare enough to double-check

tally up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To count or sum; to add up.".

No misspelling variants are generated for tally up in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is tally up, spelled T-A-L-L-Y- -U-P.

Definition

  1. 1
    To count or sum; to add up.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. When we tallied up the scores at the end of the game, we were surprised to find that Jack was the overall winner.

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 "tally up"?
"tally up" is spelled T-A-L-L-Y- -U-P.
What does "tally up" mean?
As a verb, "tally up" means: To count or sum; to add up.
What language does "tally up" come from?
"tally up" 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