tell it to Sweeney
"tell-it-to-sweeney" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tell it to Sweeney” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 18
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - I do not believe what you said.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tell-it-to-sweeney · tell it to Sweeney · English
tell it to Sweeney · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 18 letters
- VOW-7 7 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 | tell it to Sweeney |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| Letters | 18 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tell it to Sweeney” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tell it to Sweeney is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aphrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "I do not believe what you said.".
No misspelling variants are generated for tell it to Sweeney in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: "Tell it to Sweeney! (The Stuyvesants will understand.)” was an advertisement for the New York (NY) Daily News, first appearing in August 1922. The Daily News positioned itself as the newspaper of the average working man—such as the Irish “Sweeney.” The nam… The correct English form is tell it to Sweeney, spelled T-E-L-L- -I-T- -T-O- -S-W-E-E-N-E-Y.
Definition
- 1I do not believe what you said.
Etymology
"Tell it to Sweeney! (The Stuyvesants will understand.)” was an advertisement for the New York (NY) Daily News, first appearing in August 1922. The Daily News positioned itself as the newspaper of the average working man—such as the Irish “Sweeney.” The name “Stuyvesant” was used to represent blue bloods. Thus, if you advertise in the Daily News and reach the Sweeneys of New York City, the Stuyvesants will also get the message.
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.