the world and his wife
"the-world-and-his-wife" is a 18-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“the world and his wife” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 22
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Everyone; a great crowd; a jumbled assortment of people.
Corpus desk
Index EN-the-world-and-his-wife · the world and his wife · English
the world and his wife · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 22 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 | the world and his wife |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 22 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “the world and his wife” in English
Rare enough to double-check
the world and his wife is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Everyone; a great crowd; a jumbled assortment of people.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for the world and his wife in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
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 the world and his wife, spelled T-H-E- -W-O-R-L-D- -A-N-D- -H-I-S- -W-I-F-E.
Definition
- 1Everyone; a great crowd; a jumbled assortment of people.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how the world and his wife appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The world and his wife were at the opening – we could barely move.
1957 July 4, General Secretary, The Textile Institute, A Guide to Careers: No. 32: Textile Technology, New Scientist, page 42, The world and his wife are the customers for whom the textile industry supplies the greatest necessity next to food, and some of the greatest luxuries.
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.