telephone book
"telephone-book" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“telephone book” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A printed telephone directory.
Corpus desk
Index EN-telephone-book · telephone book · English
telephone book · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 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 | telephone book |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “telephone book” in English
Rare enough to double-check
telephone book is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A printed telephone directory.".
Zero misspellings are on record for telephone book in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is telephone book, spelled T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-E- -B-O-O-K.
Definition
- 1A printed telephone directory.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how telephone book appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Because they are generally quite thick, old telephone books are sometimes used in informal tests of a weapon's cutting ability.
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.