test someone's patience

verb

"test-someone-s-patience" is a 20-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“test someone's patience” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
23
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To begin to frustrate someone.

Corpus desk

Index EN-test-someone-s-patience · test someone's patience · English

test someone's patience · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 23 letters
  • VOW-9 9 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 test someone's patience
PropertyValue
Headwordtest someone's patience
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters23
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “test someone's patience” in English

test someone's patienceranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

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

Rare enough to double-check

test someone's patience is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To begin to frustrate someone.".

test someone's patience has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

No documented word history exists for this headword, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is test someone's patience, spelled T-E-S-T- -S-O-M-E-O-N-E-'-S- -P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    To begin to frustrate someone.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how test someone's patience appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. These frequent Internet outages are testing my patience.

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 "test someone's patience"?
"test someone's patience" is spelled T-E-S-T- -S-O-M-E-O-N-E-'-S- -P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E.
What does "test someone's patience" mean?
As a verb, "test someone's patience" means: To begin to frustrate someone.
What language does "test someone's patience" come from?
"test someone's patience" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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